News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
A small, tight-knit community of scientific sleuths has been unearthing growing evidence that many studies, including landmark papers published in top journals, contain manipulated images and falsified findings. These revelations have led to high-profile investigations, raised concerns about clinical trials, and culminated in the departure of university presidents. Their work – often posted on PubPeer, a website where users comment on published studies – has also forced a reckoning around how the crushing pressure to publish splashy results incentivizes fraud. "Claire Francis" is a pseudonym for someone who has commented on, by their own reckoning, 20,000 articles since 2010. About 2,000 of these studies were later retracted. Elisabeth Bik ... comments on papers using her real name, and she has earned a reputation for her preternatural ability to spot fishy figures. Bik has flagged issues with about 8,500 studies, contributing to 1,300 retractions and about 1,100 corrections, she told STAT. Those retractions include a study supporting a popular hypothesis for Alzheimer's disease that has been cited more than 2,000 times, as well as a stem cell paper cited nearly 4,500 times. Her work has made her the recipient of more derisive emails, cease-and-desist letters, and legal threats than Bik can count. That's not an uncommon experience, and Bik is an adviser to the Scientific Integrity Fund, which has set aside money to support sleuths being sued for their work.
Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on science corruption.
Air fryers that gather your personal data and audio speakers "stuffed with trackers" are among examples of smart devices engaged in "excessive" surveillance, according to the consumer group Which? The organisation tested three air fryers ... each of which requested permission to record audio on the user's phone through a connected app. Which? found the app provided by the company Xiaomi connected to trackers for Facebook and a TikTok ad network. The Xiaomi fryer and another by Aigostar sent people's personal data to servers in China. Its tests also examined smartwatches that it said required "risky" phone permissions – in other words giving invasive access to the consumer's phone through location tracking, audio recording and accessing stored files. Which? found digital speakers that were preloaded with trackers for Facebook, Google and a digital marketing company called Urbanairship. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the latest consumer tests "show that many products not only fail to meet our expectations for data protection but also consumer expectations". A growing number of devices in homes are connected to the internet, including camera-enabled doorbells and smart TVs. Last Black Friday, the ICO encouraged consumers to check if smart products they planned to buy had a physical switch to prevent the gathering of voice data.
Note: A 2015 New York Times article warned that smart devices were a "train wreck in privacy and security." For more along these lines, read about how automakers collect intimate information that includes biometric data, genetic information, health diagnosis data, and even information on people's "sexual activities" when drivers pair their smartphones to their vehicles.
TD Bank will pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels. The fine includes a $1.3 billion penalty that will be paid to the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a record fine for a bank. TD also intends to pay $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and plead guilty to resolve the US government's investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering. More than 90% of transactions went unmonitored between January 2018 to April 2024, which "enabled three money laundering networks to collectively transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts," according to a legal filing. In one instance, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network to "ensure employees would continue to process their transactions" and not declare them in required reports, the DoJ said. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a US agency that regulates banks, said TD processed hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions the clearly indicated highly suspicious activity. The Canadian bank will be subject to four years of monitoring [to] ensure it is following the agreement. The US Federal Reserve also fined TD Bank and will force the company to relocate to the United States its anti-money laundering compliance office.
Note: Several years ago, Europe's biggest bank was caught laundering millions for cartels and terrorists. For more, read our latest Substack on the dark truth behind the war on drugs.
Mexico is fighting to phase out genetically modified (GM) U.S.-grown corn. The Mexican government says this will protect its citizens' health and the country's native corn varieties. Yet the announcement provoked strong objections from the U.S., whose largest annual customer for GM corn is often Mexico–between 2018 and 2020, Mexico bought nearly 30 percent of all U.S. corn exports. The dispute has escalated to formal negotiations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Mexico ... insists that GM corn threatens human health, and that modified seeds threaten Mexico's agricultural traditions and cultural identity. What began as a wild grass called teosinte nearly 10,000 years ago ... has evolved through millennia of domestication and selective breeding to yield the corn that we know today. Mexico is concerned that GM corn poses the risk of genetic contamination–genes from U.S. corn have a history of crossing the border and entering Mexican varieties. Pollen from GM crops can travel considerable distances and cross-pollinate with the native varieties, potentially altering their genetic makeup and, in some cases, making them less suited to the specific conditions they were bred for. In the U.S., most corn is grown with seed produced by large corporations, which create just a handful of genetically identical corn varieties grown at mass scale.
Note: Read how big agrochemical giant Monsanto worked with US officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on GMOs and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
AstraZeneca is being sued by a woman who claims she was disabled by the company's Covid-19 vaccine. Brianne Dressen said she was "the picture of good health" when getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine in 2020 at the age of 39 through a Salt Lake County, Utah, clinical trial. In the hours that followed, her arm began to tingle and the feeling spread up to her shoulder, then to her opposite arm. Later, other symptoms followed, including blurred vision, a headache, ringing ears, and vomiting. In 2021, National Institutes of Health neurologists diagnosed her with "post vaccine neuropathy." Dressen is the co-chair of React19, an interest group for people alleging injury from Covid-19 vaccines. Now, she's suing AstraZeneca over medical expenses and more, arguing she's still disabled and unable to work and carry on with many activities as she once had. The lawsuit, which accuses AstraZeneca of breaching contractual obligations, comes days after AstraZeneca pulled its Covid-19 vaccine off the market. AstraZeneca has said it was doing so due to a lack of demand and not for safety reasons. The vaccine, however, has faced concerns over its efficacy and safety. As of April 1, over 10,000 claims alleging injury or death from a Covid-19 shot have been filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, according to the HHS. In a separate lawsuit, Dressen's React19 and people alleging vaccine injuries are suing the HHS over the program.
Note: People injured by AstraZeneca's vaccine were censored on social media when they tried to talk about their experiences. While mainstream narratives emphasize how rare these injuries are, the numbers speak for themselves. 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 38,068 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths and 1,652,230 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports.
Psychological science suggests that it is both possible and imperative for members of our society to find common ground. "Some of this divide is a matter of perception," says Tania Israel, PhD, professor of counseling psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Most people are not on the extremes of any of these issues, but most of what we hear is from people who are more on the extremes." (More in Common, 2018; More in Common, 2019) People have a natural tendency to conceptualize everyone on the other side of the political spectrum as if they were the same as the leaders and spokespeople of that side. "[Leaders] can be very effective at creating and strengthening â€mutual radicalization,'" says Fathali Moghaddam, PhD, using a term he coined to describe the growth of two opposing sides toward more and more extreme stances. One way to mitigate the divisiveness is to physically bring people together in safe, highly structured dialogue groups. We must also let go of our tendencies to want to bring someone to our own side of the political divide. "People are married to the notion that they can change minds–this almost always isn't true," says [psychotherapist Jeanne] Safer. In our personal relationships, Tania Israel [at the University of California, Santa Barbara] stresses to keep in mind our own sometimes-faulty perceptions of the other side. "Don't make assumptions about someone based on their vote. Instead, I encourage people to be curious about what their vote meant to them. That's an opportunity to open up a conversation to learn more about people that are important to us."
Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
Whether revealed in a post on social media, a short video on TikTok, or the latest piece of news on Fox or NBC, it is hard to ignore political divisions in the U.S. We ... conducted a survey of over 2,400 Republicans and Democrats in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential elections. We included questions about each person's moral and sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs. We found considerable similarity in their moral and political attitudes. At least 75% of responses overlapped. Both groups endorsed the importance of considering how fair or harmful their actions are for others, and they both believed that upholding democracy and finding bipartisan solutions is important for the U.S. In a series of subsequent experiments involving more than 4,400 participants, we presented our findings to people who had not participated in the survey. Participants all saw the same findings, but they were randomly assigned to see the information described in different ways. For some participants, our results were described as showing small differences between Democrats and Republicans, whereas for others they were described as showing a high degree of similarity between the two groups. When findings were described as showing similarities, participants thought that their political opponents had attitudes and beliefs that were more similar to their own group. They were more willing to find common ground with their political opponents on major social issues like gun control and abortion. Focusing on group differences might inadvertently contribute to political tension.
Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
For Alexandra Hudson, working in Washington, D.C., was a culture shock. Ms. Hudson hails from Canada, land of the nice. "I realized that these people would smile at you, flatter you, and stab you in the back the moment that you no longer served their purposes," [said Ms. Hudson]. Her first book, "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves," looks at how to bridge gaps and find commonalities. "Clarity came when I understood there was a difference between civility and politeness," [said Ms. Hudson]. "That politeness, I argue in my book, is a technique. Civility, by contrast, is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals and worthy of respect because of our shared dignity as human beings. When we are cruel and malicious to others, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not just us hurting someone else. We are hurt as well. It deforms us, our souls, as well. The soul of civility [is] acting in ways that cultivate our soul. We further appreciate the humanity and dignity and personhood of those around us. The differences that may exist between us are far outweighed by the commonalities we have as members of the human community. If we go through life without a care in the world for how our actions affect others, that has a negative, vicious ripple effect. If enough of us choose to reclaim the soul of civility, I think we might be able to change the world."
Note: Our latest 7-min video explores the importance of healing the polarization that's poisoning our conversations and sabotaging democracy. For more, read our recent article on healing the culture wars and explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
The United States' secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake. Academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race ... to create undetectable deepfakes. The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country's most elite, clandestine military efforts. "Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content." JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that "appear to be a unique individual that ... does not exist in the real world," with each featuring "multiple expressions" and "Government Identification quality photos." The document notes that "the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers." JSOC hopes to be able to generate "selfie video" from these fabricated humans. Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, "to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms." A joint statement by the NSA, FBI, and CISA warned [that] the global proliferation of deepfake technology [is] a "top risk" for 2023. An April paper by the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute was similarly concerned: "Experts expect the malicious use of AI, including the creation of deepfake videos to sow disinformation to polarize societies and deepen grievances, to grow over the next decade."
Note: Why is the Pentagon investing in advanced deepfake technology? Read about the Pentagon's secret army of 60,000 operatives who use fake online personas to manipulate public discourse. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and media corruption from reliable major media sources.
The man who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when the COVID pandemic began says still-classified State Department documents add credibility to his long-held contention that the virus spread because of a leak from a laboratory. "Once they are declassified, the American public will get a much better understanding of the knowledge base we have," Dr. Robert Redfield [said]. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the House Select Subcommittee son the Coronavirus Pandemic, says he recently viewed the State Department's documents, which he says strongly hint that ... COVID first spread due to a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wenstrup is asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declassify the report, and Redfield agrees. On Wednesday, Wenstrup announced that his panel has issued a subpoena "to compel Dr. David Morens – a top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – to appear for a public hearing." The committee's news release says "Dr. Morens will be asked to address new evidence suggesting he deliberately obstructed the Select Subcommittee's investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his former boss, Dr. (Anthony) Fauci." "I think he (Wenstrup) is gonna get to the truth," said Redfield, who has long complained that he was "sidelined" because his lab leak theory contradicted other scientists including Fauci. Redfield says it's also vital that researchers minimize the danger of future lab leaks. He's calling for an end to "gain of function" research. "That's the real biosecurity threat," he said.
Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more, tune into a nuanced interview with Dr. Robert Redfield about the origins and ongoing impact of COVID-19.
Anthony Fauci detailed how the research portfolio of his longtime former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not distinguish between "biodefense efforts" and "naturally occurring" pathogens in a fall 2017 presentation. Fauci described "the joining with and ultimate indistinguishing of biodefense efforts and efforts directed at naturally occurring emerging and re-emerging infections. "Gain-of-function" research (GOF) makes viruses more pathogenic or transmissible. Much of this gain-of-function research is considered "dual use research of concern" (DURC) because it can be applied toward benevolent civilian aims or misapplied toward the development of bioweapons. Fauci's biodefense legacy has taken on a new significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, especially those who believe the pandemic is likely to have resulted from a lab accident, say the global proliferation of maximum security labs and GOF/DURC has made the world less safe. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, amid concerns about alleged "weapons of mass destruction," including biological weapons, former President George W. Bush asked Congress to invest billions in building maximum security labs capable of combating bioterrorism. By the late 2000s, fears of bioterrorism from the Middle East had faded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's conclusion that a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick had been responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks stoked a new kind of fear – of an expanding population of scientists with classified knowledge and access to pathogens. Counter-bioterrorism research at the National Institutes for Health surged from $53 million in 2001 to at least $1.6 billion in 2004. GAO reports uncovered major biosecurity breaches.
Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci admitted to congress that there was no scientific basis for many pandemic policies. Can anything he's said about gain-of-function research be trusted?
About 468 million children ... live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. "Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence," U.N. human rights chief Volker TĂĽrk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. "Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities." In 2005, [the United Nations Security Council] identified – and condemned – six grave violations against children in times of war: killing or maiming; recruitment into or use by armed forces and armed groups; attacks on schools or hospitals; rape or other grave acts of sexual violence; abduction; and the denial of humanitarian access to them. Between 2005 and 2023, more than 347,000 grave violations against youngsters were verified across more than 30 conflict zones in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to UNICEF. Israa Al-Qahwaji, a mental health and psychosocial support coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza, shared the story of a young boy who survived an airstrike. In one therapy session, he was asked to mold something out of clay to represent a wish. With his remaining hand, he carefully shaped a house. After finishing the exercise, he turned to the counselor with a question that left Al-Qahwaji emotionally overwhelmed. "Now," the boy asked, "will you bring my dad and give me my hand back?"
Note: Learn more about human rights abuses during wartime in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.
When Joe Biden took office ... he promised an overhaul of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Biden inherited Michael Carvajal as BOP director. Carvajal ... began as an entry-level prison guard, worked his way up into administration, became a warden, and finally made his way to BOP headquarters. Carvajal resigned in 2022 after more than 100 BOP officers were arrested for, or convicted of, serious crimes during his short tenure, including smuggling drugs and cell phones into prisons to sell to prisoners, theft from prison commissaries, committing violence against prisoners, and even one warden running a "rape club," where he and other officials, including the prison chaplain, raped female prisoners at will. Carvajal finally resigned after Congress learned of the "rape club" and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that he leave. Carvajal's problem was obvious from the beginning. He brought literally no outside expertise to the job. He had never worked anywhere in his adult life other than the BOP. There would be no bold, new programs, no new ideas for reducing recidivism, no move to train prisoners to lead productive lives. According to Peter Mosques, a criminal justice professor of John Jay College, the BOP is ... an employment agency for otherwise unemployable white men with no education and no outside job experience, many of whom washed out of the military or the local police academy.
Note: John Kiriakou is a whistleblower, former CIA counter-terrorism officer, and former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Police departments in 15 states provided The Post with rarely seen records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to the arrest reports in those cases and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software – denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error. Officers often obscured their reliance on the software in public-facing reports, saying that they identified suspects "through investigative means" or that a human source such as a witness or police officer made the initial identification. Defense lawyers and civil rights groups argue that people have a right to know about any software that identifies them as part of a criminal investigation, especially a technology that has led to false arrests. The reliability of the tool has been successfully challenged in a handful of recent court cases around the country, leading some defense lawyers to posit that police and prosecutors are intentionally trying to shield the technology from court scrutiny. Misidentification by this type of software played a role in the wrongful arrests of at least seven innocent Americans, six of whom were Black. Charges were later dismissed against all of them. Federal testing of top facial recognition software has found the programs are more likely to misidentify people of color.
Note: Read about the secret history of facial recognition. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and police corruption from reliable major media sources.
Inside the Internet Archive it is as quiet as any library. But the subterranean staff working room in its cavernous San Francisco headquarters feels more like a bunker, the nerve center of an invisible war for the open web. Mark Graham, the director of the archive's Wayback Machine, which saves billions of snapshots of the web, and his team of engineers have spent most of this month fighting to ensure the site is online and accessible after archive.org was swarmed with traffic by a hacker and forced offline earlier this month. Archive.org and its collections are back online, and the Wayback Machine is searchable again, although ... some features are not available yet. Prior to the hack the archive had been online uninterrupted for nearly 30 years, pursuing its mission to provide open access to knowledge for all. Now that mission has become an increasingly fraught battle, and amongst its staff a siege mentality prevails, the result of not only the monumental cyberattack but also a growing culture of censorship and the restriction of knowledge repositories – like the recent wave of book bannings or the copyright lawsuit that the archive have been fending off for a group of book publishers. "Libraries are under attack," said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive's founder. Graham said he sees the recent cyberattack on archive.org and Wayback Machine in the context of hacks on the Calgary Public Library and another targeting the Seattle library system.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship from reliable major media sources.
RTX Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon, agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. RTX, as part of this agreement that spanned multiple investigations into its business, admitted to engaging in two separate schemes to defraud the Defense Department, which included deals for a radar system and Patriot missile systems. "The Raytheon allegations are stunning, even by the lax standards of the arms industry," [said William Hartung with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft]. "Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company." Raytheon has been ... embroiled in scandals and malfeasance for decades. The company pleaded guilty to "illegally trafficking in secret military budget reports" (1990); paid $4 million to settle charges that it overbilled the Pentagon (1994); paid $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit contending that its Amana unit sold defective furnaces and water heaters (1997); paid $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly charged the Pentagon for expenses incurred in marketing products to foreign governments (1998); [and] agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to resolve State Department charges that the company violated export controls (2003).
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
The Air Force overpaid for soap dispensers used in the bathrooms of C-17 military aircraft by 7,943% – or more than 80 times the price of similar commercially available dispensers – according to a Defense Department inspector general report released Tuesday. The dispensers were one of about a dozen spare parts for which Boeing overcharged the Air Force, according to the report, resulting in nearly $1 million in additional and unnecessary costs. The costs of the soap dispenser from Boeing, the similar soap dispenser and the number of dispensers purchased by the Air Force were redacted in the report, but in total, the Air Force overpaid $149,072 for the soap dispensers. An anonymous tip about the dispensers launched the inspector general's audit into the spare parts. "The Air Force needs to establish and implement more effective internal controls to help prevent overpaying for spare parts for the remainder of this contract, which continues through 2031," Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch said in a statement. Boeing has a contract with the Air Force that lets Boeing purchase needed spare parts for the C17, and the Air Force reimburses Boeing for the spare parts purchased, according to the report. "Significant overpayments for spare parts may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract, potentially reducing C-17 readiness worldwide," Storch said.
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Philip G. Zimbardo, a Stanford University social psychologist whose aborted 1971 experiment, employing college students to play prison guards and inmates, became one of the most controversial episodes in modern psychology and yielded disturbing insights into the effect of stress on human behavior, died Oct. 14. He was 91. For his prison experiment, conducted over a school break, Dr. Zimbardo recruited 24 male students, screening them to ensure that they had no history of crime or violence and that they were emotionally stable. He randomly assigned half to be guards and half to be prisoners. The guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners but to otherwise maintain control as they saw fit. Wearing uniforms and sunglasses, they forced the prisoners to follow strict rules, and punishments for violators included solitary confinement in a converted closet. The prisoners ... were referred to by numbers. After an attempted revolt on the second day, the guards began asserting their authority by turning fire extinguishers on the prisoners and demanding that they ... strip naked. Dr. Zimbardo [wrote] that the experiment was "a cautionary tale" about what can happen when "we underestimate the extent to which the power of social roles and external pressures can influence our actions." He saw parallels between the guards' behavior during his exercise and the conduct of U.S. soldiers who had abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Note: Read more about Zimbardo's revealing experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources.
Clinicians know that their patients' health is determined not just by the care they receive but also factors outside the confines of medicine – employment, financial stability, safe housing and access to nutritious food, to name a few. Boston Medical Center ... is well ahead of the curve; 23 years ago, it began its first "food as medicine" program. Patients identified as having food insecurity receive a food "prescription," meaning they could visit a food pantry run by the hospital once every two weeks and receive boxes customized for their medical conditions. Latchman Hiralall, manager of BMC's Preventive Food Pantry, explained that clinicians give a referral to the program, so workers know whether the patient requires a diet for diabetes, kidney disease, autoimmune conditions and so forth. Eligible patients can walk in right away, chat with pantry staff and leave with a wide array of food. Crucially, it's patients who decide what food they take. Eligibility is simply a matter of answering yes to two questions about whether they are worried about getting enough food. They don't need to show proof of financial stress. The program serves about 6,800 patients, distributing 50,000 pounds of food a month. The source of much of the fresh produce: The hospital itself. That's right – BMC operates its own rooftop farm. Seventy percent of the vegetables grown there go to Preventive Food Pantry participants. A portion of the rest is served in the hospital cafeteria.
Note: Read about how German hospitals are offering patients the "planetary health diet," a plant-based, whole food approach that's also in service to the Earth. Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies.
Sirish Subash is no ordinary ninth-grade student. The 14-year-old from Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Snellville, Georgia, was named America's top young scientist after winning the 2024 3M Young Scientist Challenge. The reason? Subash's creation of an AI handheld pesticide detector named "Pestiscand." "It works on a method called spectrophotometry. Now what this means is that it uses different ways that light interacts with different chemicals to look for different chemicals on the produce," Subash [said]. "Each chemical reflects different parts or wavelengths of light, and that creates a spectral signature, which is basically a catalog of what wavelengths are reflected back. So, "Pestiscand" can look for those wavelengths that are reflected by side residues on the produce." While the product is not on the market for the broader public at this time, Subash aims to dedicate his time to ensuring it has mass availability in the near future. "I want to continue developing projects like "Pestiscand" and eventually get them out to the world, to the market. That's one of my goals for "Pestiscand", to get it out to everyone," Subash added. In his downtime, Subash enjoys reading both fiction and non-fiction and making origami. His $25,000 prizefund will go toward his college education
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and technology for good.
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.