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.
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new guidelines 18 months ago regarding the radiation risk from cellphones, it used unusually bold language on the topic for the American health agency: “We recommend caution in cellphone use.” The agency’s website previously had said that any risks “likely are comparable to other lifestyle choices we make every day.” Within weeks, though, the C.D.C. reversed course. It no longer recommended caution, and deleted a passage specifically addressing potential risks for children. More than 500 pages of internal records obtained by The New York Times, along with interviews with former agency officials, reveal a debate and some disagreement among scientists and health agencies about what guidance to give as the use of mobile devices skyrockets. Although the initial C.D.C. changes, which were released in June 2014, had been three years in the making, officials quickly realized they had taken a step they were not prepared for. The new guidelines ... aroused alarm within the agency, and concerns from some outside experts. An official from the Vermont Health Department forwarded a letter he had received asking about the state’s legal liability for allowing wireless technology in public schools and libraries. Within the C.D.C., officials began to retreat from the language. In emails, Robert C. Whitcomb Jr., head of the Radiation Studies Branch, began assuring colleagues at other agencies and universities that the new guidelines were “not an official policy.”
Note: For lots more reliable information on cellphone risk, read this well researched article. In 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged the US to reassess cell phone safety standards for children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned. "The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). "It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something," he told The Telegraph on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The warnings have special resonance since Mr White was one of the very few voices in the central banking fraternity who stated loudly and clearly between 2005 and 2008 that Western finance was riding for a fall, and that the global economy was susceptible to a violent crisis. Combined public and private debt has surged to all-time highs to 185pc of GDP in emerging markets and to 265pc of GDP in the OECD club, both up by 35 percentage points since the top of the last credit cycle in 2007. Mr White, who is also chief author of G30's recent report on the post-crisis future of central banking, said it is impossible know what the trigger will be for the next crisis since the global system has lost its anchor and is inherently prone to breakdown.
Note: Since the bailout in 2008, the percentage of US banking assets held by the big banks has almost doubled. Will big banks move to avert the next financial crisis when crisis has proven so profitable for them? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the financial industry.
Politicians and business leaders gathering in the Swiss Alps this week face an increasingly divided world. Just 62 people ... own as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire world population and the richest 1 percent own more than the other 99 percent put together, anti-poverty charity Oxfam said on Monday. The wealth gap is widening faster than anyone anticipated, with the 1 percent overtaking the rest one year earlier than Oxfam had predicted only a year ago. Rising inequality and a widening trust gap between people and their political leaders are big challenges for the global elite as they converge on Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, which runs from Jan. 20 to 23. Edelman's annual "Trust Barometer" survey shows a record gap this year in trust between the informed publics and mass populations in many countries, driven by income inequality and divergent expectations of the future. The gap is the largest in the United States, followed by the UK, France and India. The next wave of technological innovation, dubbed the fourth industrial revolution and a focus of the Davos meeting, threatens further social upheaval as many traditional jobs are lost to robots. "Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate," the report says. It points to a "global spider's web" of tax havens that ensures wealth stays out of reach of ordinary citizens and governments.
Note: Read about the annual Davos forum and other more secretive meetings where global elites make decisions with far-reaching implications. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
Wealth inequality has grown to the stage where 62 of the world’s richest people own as much as the poorest half of humanity combined. The [new] research, conducted by the charity Oxfam, found that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population – 3.6 billion people – has fallen by 41 per cent, or a trillion US dollars, since 2010. While this group has become poorer, the wealth of the richest 62 people on the planet has increased by more than half a trillion dollars. The report, “An Economy for the 1%”, says the gap between the global richest and the global poorest has widened in just the last 12 months. In 2010, 388 people had the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity. In 2011, this fell to 177, [and] has continued to fall each year. Oxfam GB chief executive Mark Goldring said a crackdown on global tax havens was a necessary step towards ending the rampant global inequality. "World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action to ensure that those at the bottom get their fair share of economic growth. We need to end the era of tax havens which has allowed rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid their responsibilities to society," [he said].
Note: Read about reliable news articles on secretive meetings where global elites make decisions with far-reaching implications. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
Alex Hummell says few dentists seem worried enough about invisible, odorless mercury to take the kinds of precautions needed to prevent everyday exposures. As the head of a ... firm that sells sophisticated equipment to gauge airborne levels of highly toxic mercury at industrial sites worldwide, Hummell has watched manufacturers of all sorts put their employees through strict training programs in which they don special equipment to avoid even tiny exposures. Then he walks into dental clinics and is dumbfounded. On numerous occasions, he said, he has detected mercury levels in dental offices that were two to three times the average workday exposure limit of 100 micrograms per cubic meter set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but patients and the staff were wearing little or no protective equipment. “I’ve seen in dental offices what would make these other offices have to shut down,” said Hummell. “They would be closing their doors and getting respirators on.” Instead, he said, “there are kids running around everywhere. It’s nuts. It’s the exact same toxin, and it’s being treated totally differently.” Several years ago, Hummell said, he set up a booth at a regional dental conference in Denver to demonstrate how his equipment could pick up rising mercury levels with a mere gentle brushing of a filling in an old tooth.
Note: For more on risks of mercury in fillings, see this mercola.com article. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
The war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al-Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers." On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas. Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon. A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year. A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as "fenethylline," Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon. "Syrian government forces and rebel groups each say the other uses Captagon to endure protracted engagements without sleep, [and] ordinary Syrians are increasingly experimenting with the pills," Reuters reported. One secular ex-Syrian fighter who spoke to the BBC said the drug is tailor-made for the battlefield because of its ability to give soldiers superhuman energy and courage. Another ex-fighter told the BBC that his 350-person brigade took the pill without knowing if it was a drug or medicine for energy. While Westerners have speculated that the drug is being used by Islamic State fighters, the biggest consumer has for years been Saudi Arabia. In 2010, a third of the world's supply - about seven tons - ended up in Saudi Arabia.
Note: A Saudi royal prince was caught attempting to smuggle two tons of Captagon out of Lebanon in October. Evidence of heavy Captagon use by Paris terrorists was uncovered shortly thereafter.
Sexual assault has become a dominant topic on the nation’s college campuses in recent years. But it has largely remained a hidden issue in elementary, middle and high schools. Twenty-one percent of middle school students reported that they experienced unwanted physical touching on school grounds, according to a 2014 study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among high school students, 4 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls say they have been forced to have sexual intercourse against their will, according to a 2013 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Obama administration has taken an aggressive approach to enforcing the anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, which requires K-12 schools and colleges to guard against sexual harassment and sexual violence. The law is based on the idea that children should be protected from hostile environments that make it impossible for them to fully participate in school. The Education Department in fiscal 2015 received 65 civil rights complaints related to K-12 school districts’ handling of sexual violence - triple the number the agency had received the year before. Esther Warkov and Joel Levin, whose daughter was allegedly raped in 2012 during an overnight field trip with her Seattle high school, believe that addressing the problem will take a massive movement of students and families who know what their Title IX rights are and demand that schools meet them.
Note: The above article describes the extreme failure of some schools to protect students from sexual violence, but does not mention the culture of predation found in elite prep schools. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
Twelve former residents of children's homes say they were abused by Lord Janner. [Janner], who died before a court could examine claims of child abuse against him, regularly visited homes in Leicester in the 1970s and 1980s. An ex-police officer says he reported suspicions about Lord Janner, a decade before police began a full inquiry. A "trial of the facts", due to take place in April, has now been shelved by prosecutors. However, the BBC has traced and interviewed dozens of men and women who lived at children's homes in Leicestershire in the 70s and 80s. It has also spoken to [several people] involved in investigating the case of Frank Beck, a notorious care home manager who was eventually convicted of child abuse. He was sent to prison in 1991, where he died in 1994. During Beck's trial, he and an alleged victim both sensationally claimed that Lord Janner was a child abuser, and the alleged victim was then interviewed by police. A former detective, Graeme Peene, told the BBC that in the late 1970s he reported Beck, after seeing him rubbing a boy's groin at The Beeches children's home. He was later asked to go back to The Beeches to return another boy who had run away, and was directed to Beck's office, [where] Lord Janner ... was sitting in an armchair "and next to Greville Janner was this young boy". Mr Peene says he considered it "an unusual occurrence" which was "something I felt ought to be reported". His report was sent to divisional headquarters where, he said, nothing was done.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
Three chances were missed to prosecute late peer Lord Janner over sex abuse claims, an inquiry has found. The independent inquiry, commissioned by the director of public prosecutions, found police and prosecutors missed opportunities to charge Lord Janner in 1991, 2002 and 2007. Before he died in December, the ex-Labour MP ... was accused of 22 counts of sex offences against boys between the 1960s and 80s. The inquiry found the 1991 decision not to charge Lord Janner was "wrong" as there was enough evidence against him. Furthermore in 2002, allegations against Lord Janner were not supplied by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service, and as a result no prosecution was possible, the inquiry said. And in 2007 Lord Janner should have been arrested and his home searched. Since Lord Janner's death a "trial of the facts", which was due to take place in April, has now been shelved by prosecutors. A Leicestershire Police investigation in 1991 failed to cover basic steps such as checking details of whether a 14-year-old boy - known as complainant one - had shared hotel rooms with Lord Janner. A second alleged victim came forward in April 2000 when police in Leicester were investigating abuse in children's homes. He made a statement claiming he had been seriously sexually abused by Lord Janner, but this was not passed to the CPS in a file submitted in 2002, and no further action was taken. Then in 2007 problems with the credibility of a third complainant meant Lord Janner could not be prosecuted.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
The first vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer, came out five years ago. It has become a hot political topic. Behind the political fireworks is a quieter backlash against a public health strategy that has won powerful advocates in the medical and public health community. Many find the public health case for HPV vaccination compelling. But Dr. Diane Harper, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, says the vaccine is being way oversold. That's pretty striking, because Harper worked on studies that got the vaccines approved. And she has accepted grants from the manufacturers, although she says she doesn't any longer. Harper changed her mind when the vaccine makers started lobbying state legislatures to require schoolkids to get vaccinated. "Ninety-five percent of women who are infected with HPV never, ever get cervical cancer," she says. "It seemed very odd to be mandating something for which 95 percent of infections never amount to anything. Pap smear screening is far and away the biggest thing a woman can do to protect herself, to prevent cervical cancer," she says. Apart from the comparative advantages of vaccine versus Pap smears, Harper has another objection to mandating early vaccination at this point. She points out that studies so far show the vaccines protect for four or five years. Young women may need a booster shot later. As it stands now, Harper says, vaccinating an 11-year-old girl might not protect her when she needs it most - in her most sexually active years.
Note: Read a more recent article on why the Gardasil vaccine may not be a wise choice. Merck, the company behind Gardasil, had to suspend a questionable lobbying campaign to make vaccination by this costly drug mandatory back in 2007. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.
Animal communicators are people who can fully communicate with an animal just as they would with a normal human person. The communication is telepathic and 2-way. Animal communicators have most likely existed for a long time, probably in every single culture in the world. Anna Breytenbach is a professional animal communicator. Anna was summoned in the case of the black leopard who had been moved to a South African wild cat park. He was given the name Diabolo (similar to the Spanish word for devil) and ... snarled at anyone who went near. The owners of the park were afraid of approaching him. They summoned an animal communicator (Anna) for help. After communicating with the leopard, she learnt that one of the reasons for him being upset was that he thought something was expected of him. The other reason was that he was worried about what had happened to 2 young cubs at the last place he was being kept. When Anna relayed this to the park owner, [he] broke down and cried. He confirmed that they were indeed 2 young cubs at the previous place. He told Anna to reassure the black leopard that nothing would be expected of him here - and that the 2 young cubs were safe. This relieved the leopard to the point where he opened up and became friendly. His name was subsequently changed to something more fitting Spirit. There is no way Anna could possibly have known this information beforehand. She learnt it telepathically. She was told this by an animal!
Note: Watch videos of several animal communicators in action at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Alma Tucker discovered what her lifework would be when she was about to retire. She had been working for the Mexican Consulates Department of Protection in San Diego. One of the assignments I had was to see patients in hospitals, Ms. Tucker says. She would act as an interpreter and help them find family members in Mexico. This time, it was a 14-year-old girl. When I arrived I found she was being sexually exploited by a smuggler, Tucker says. The smuggler, who was supposed to be transporting the girl into the US, had told her that her parents hadnt paid him, and so, he said, she was obligated to have sex with anyone he wanted her to. By the time the girl arrived in the US, she had been forced into sex by multiple men. That was when Tucker realized that victims of sex abuse and human trafficking need comforting as well as practical help. As she looked further into the problem of human trafficking on the US-Mexican border, she realized how few resources existed for Mexican victims. In 2010, Tucker and her husband established the International Network of Hearts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping victims of human trafficking, particularly underage ones, and raising awareness about the enormous problem of labor and sex trafficking. Then Tucker opened a home for underage victims in Tijuana, Mexico, called La Casa del Jardin The Garden House so named because, she says, she thinks of each girl as a flower waiting to bloom. We try to create a very healthy ambiance, she says. Theyre survivors. We give them a lot of love.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
When bride-to-be Dana Olsen's fiancé got cold feet and called off their wedding six weeks before they were to be married, she was understandably shocked. "I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what happened," she wrote on xoJane. But when life gave Olsen some particularly sour lemons, she made lemonade. "What's a girl to do?" she wrote. "Well, you've still gotta throw a party." After realizing she wouldn't be able to get any of her reception deposits back ("tens of thousands of nonrefundable dollars," she estimated), Olsen ... teamed up with Mary's Place, a Seattle homeless shelter for women and children, to put together a special night - complete with flowers, candles, plenty of food and a live band - for those living in the shelter. Olsen's generosity inspired others to contribute to the event, according to The Seattle Times. A group of hair stylists and makeup artists offered their services, ensuring each partygoer felt like a million bucks. "Turning the would-be wedding into an event for women in transition has made me feel a little less desolate," Olsen wrote. "It's helped distract me from the fact that I'm a jilted bride." Though Olsen's mother attended the party, Olsen herself chose to spend the day hiking with her dad.
Note: For more on this inspiring event, read this Seattle Times article.
Lava Mae - the unlikely nonprofit that turns old Muni buses into shower stalls to be used by homeless people - said Tuesday that its second bus is rolling along and that it has a new plan to expand throughout California. Doniece Sandoval, founder of Lava Mae, stood in front of Bus No. 2, which will be parked every Tuesday on Fulton Street next to the Main Library. Sandoval ... had the idea for Lava Mae after seeing a filthy homeless woman crying and saying she would never be clean. Lava Mae’s simple solution of providing homeless people with showers and toilets has captured the attention of people around the world, many of whom have asked Sandoval to help them create a similar program. City Librarian Luis Herrera said Lava Mae is a great addition to the Main Library, which sees up to 3,000 visitors every day - many of them homeless and seeking bathrooms, sinks or just a place to rest. Despite all the praise, getting Lava Mae up and running has been much harder than expected, Sandoval said. The first bus is being taken out of rotation for a few weeks so some electrical glitches can be fixed. Finding licensed bus drivers adept at working with homeless people and willing to do it for $16 an hour has also been a huge problem, especially with all the competition from corporate shuttle buses. Sandoval said the bus driver shortage has prompted her to plan for the third Lava Mae vehicle to be a pickup truck pulling a shower stall on wheels. That should be running early next year.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
NASA has set up a Planetary Defense Coordination Office - to defend the Earth from asteroids and comets that get too close for our comfort. The department, which includes the position of Planetary Defense Officer, is managed by the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. And its mission includes the early detection of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) - asteroids and comets which get within 0.05 Astronomical Units of Earth's orbit around the sun (7.5 million kilometers) and are large enough, greater than around 30 - 50 meters (98 - 164 feet), to reach the Earth's surface. They must also track and issue warnings on the minor planets, or even try to redirect them. If it's too late and space rubble is found hurtling towards the Earth's surface, the team will coordinate with the U.S. government to plan a response to an actual impact threat. More than 13,500 NEOs have been discovered to date and about 1,500 are detected each year. "Asteroid detection, tracking and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "While there are no known impact threats at this time, the 2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent 'Halloween Asteroid' close approach remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky."
Note: Dr. Carol Rosin, spokesperson for modern rocket science's founder Wernher Von Braun, made this comment about Von Braun, asteroids, and more: "The reasons for space-based weaponry were all based on a lie. He said the strategy was to use scare tactics - that first the Russians, then terrorists are going to be considered the enemy. The next enemy was asteroids. The last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens, and all of it is a lie." Read a two page summary of the UFO cover-up for more.
A national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. [Meanwhile], a new generation of technology ... has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens. The powerful systems also have become flash points for civil libertarians and activists. “This is something that’s been building since September 11,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “First funding went to the military to develop this technology, and now it has come back to domestic law enforcement. It’s the perfect storm of cheaper and easier-to-use technologies and money from state and federal governments to purchase it.” But perhaps the most controversial and revealing technology is the threat-scoring software Beware. As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them ... to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red. Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so ... only Intrado - not the police or the public - knows how Beware tallies its scores. The system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social media, like criticizing the police, and trigger a heavier response by officers.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case, [and] filed a federal suit against DuPont in the summer of 1999. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. The story that Bilott began to see ... was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. DuPont was nothing like the [other chemical] corporations he had represented at Taft. "DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts." He had seen what the ... tainted drinking water had done to [the Tennants'] cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps?
Note: Read the complete, detailed account of the lawsuit that exposed DuPont's massively harmful criminality at the link above. Read more about the thousands of people DuPont knowingly poisoned in this article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Fourteen years after 9/11, Truthers, as they’ve been pejoratively labeled since 2001, have not gone away. In 2006, Zogby found that 42 percent of Americans nationally believed the U.S. “concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks,” and that “there has been a cover-up.” There are millions of people in the U.S. who believe the official story of 9/11 is ... false. That’s not a fringe group. It’s possible that you know a friend who’s a Truther. Or a dentist. Or a bartender. Maybe they just haven’t told you. Bob Mcllvaine lost his son, Bobby, in the north tower of the World Trade Center. He joined a group called 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, [and] helped lead a march of 250,000 anti-war protesters in New York. “I didn’t want to be a victim," he said. "I wanted to have change." The turning point came when he attended the 9/11 Commission hearings. “I felt then that this whole thing has been a big lie,” he said. “People just don’t want to talk about it.” His status as the father of a victim hasn’t protected him from critics of the Truther camp. But he also says that after one Fox News segment a few years ago, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Fox host Geraldo Rivera both told him footage of WTC 7 looked like a controlled demolition to them. Mcllvaine also said he gets anonymous calls from the CIA or FBI encouraging him and saying they agree it was an inside job.
Note: The Boston Globe recently published a letter by Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Watch the excellent new documentary "Incontrovertible" which presents powerful proof that the fall of WTC 7 was known and reported before it actually happened on BBC news and elsewhere. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.
Cologne’s police chief has been removed from his post amid criticism of his force’s handling of a string of sexual assaults and robberies carried out by groups of men in the German city on New Year’s Eve. His enforced departure came as a witness to the violence told the Guardian the events appeared to have been coordinated. Lieli Shabani, 35, said she saw three Arabic speaking males who were “clearly giving instructions”. A leaked police report [describes] how officers were initially overwhelmed by events outside the city’s train station, after which more than 100 women filed criminal complaints of sexual assault and robbery, including two accounts of rape. Cologne mayor Henriette Reker suggested on Friday that police had held back information from her, and said in a statement that her “trust in the Cologne police leadership is significantly shaken”. The leaked police report, obtained by the German newspaper Bild, said women were forced to “run a gauntlet ... beyond description” to reach or leave the station. The incidents in and around the square in front of the main train station have led to accusations of a police and media cover-up. Evidence has emerged that similar attacks had taken place in seven other German cities.
Note: It's entirely possible that these attacks were coordinated in order to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals and the manipulation of public perception.
Authorities need to quickly determine whether a string of New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne blamed largely on foreigners may be linked to similar offenses in other cities, Germany's justice minister said in comments published Sunday. Authorities and witnesses say the attackers were among about 1,000 men gathered at Cologne's central train station, some of whom broke off into small groups that groped and robbed women. "If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, that appears in some form to be planned," Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the newspaper Bild. Police in Hamburg are also investigating similar sexual assaults and thefts in the St. Pauli district, which occurred on a smaller scale in the northern city on New Year's Eve. Authorities in Sweden and Finland are also investigating similar incidents in their countries. Cologne police are investigating 379 criminal complaints filed with them, about 40 percent of which involve allegations of sexual offenses. So far, of 31 suspects detained by police for questioning, 18 were asylum seekers but there were also two Germans, an American and others, and none of them were accused specifically of committing sexual assaults.
Note: It's entirely possible that these attacks were coordinated in order to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. There were news reports that the police stood by and let these assaults happen. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals and the manipulation of public perception.
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.