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Revealing News For a Better World

News Stories
Excerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media


Below are highly revealing excerpts of key news stories from the major media that suggest major cover-ups and corruption. Links are provided to the full stories on their media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These news stories are listed by date posted. You can explore the same list by order of importance or by date of news story. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

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.


Street Sheet hits 25th anniversary with celebration at SOMArts
2014-09-10, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2014-09-15 06:56:41
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Street-Sheet-hits-25th-anniversary-with...

Take a stroll through just about any commercial district in San Francisco, and you're likely to see a revolutionary sight that spread from the city around the world - homeless people hawking copies of a newspaper that is all about poverty. The newspaper is the Street Sheet, and when it started there was nothing like it. Now, the buck-a-copy publication is marking a major milestone: the 25th anniversary of its first issue. It's grown to become an eight-page broadsheet on newsprint, filled with artwork, journalism, poetry and opinion pieces produced by homeless people themselves. There are 125 homeless vendors who sell a combined 17,000 copies twice a month, and they keep all the proceeds in hopes of earning a small living without panhandling. Many of the pieces are produced by homeless people. The Street Sheet is billed by its publisher, the Coalition on Homelessness, as the longest continuously produced newspaper covering homeless issues in the world, although New York City's Street News came out around the same time. Together, they set the stage for similar papers in more than 30 countries, including Britain's the Big Issue, Spare Change News in Boston and Seattle's Real Change News. The Coalition on Homelessness was founded in 1987 to fight for the rights of homeless people and to advocate for more housing.

Note: Read a rich sample of this publication discussing the courageous work of peaceworker David Hartsough. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Charity 'Store' For The Homeless Gives Customers So Much More Than Just Clothes
2014-01-15, Huffington Post
Posted: 2014-09-15 06:55:17
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/charity-store-homeless_n_4604419.html

The Street Store isn't really a store, if a store requires money being exchanged -- or an actual building with walls. The Street Store, ... in Cape Town, is a charity pop-up "shop" consisting simply of cardboard posters, each hung with clothing items and accessories. Everything is free for the taking for the neighborhood's homeless. The clothing ... is all donated, and everything is up for grabs. There are assistants on site to help "customers" select items as they browse, and anything they choose to take will be wrapped up for them before they go. It's a true retail experience, with all the variety, leisure, freedom and dignity we love about shopping. And it's not only Cape Town's homeless population that can benefit. The beauty of The Street Store's concept is that it can be replicated anywhere. All you need to do is print out The Street Store artwork from the website to make your own posters, add your own logo and find a public space (along with proper approvals from local government). "We realized that homelessness and poverty isn’t a uniquely Capetonian problem. It isn’t even just a South African problem," [Kayli Levitan, one of the The Street Store organizers,] said. "It's world-wide." And now we all just have one more way -- one very easy way -- to help.

Note: Watch a great two-minute video on this inspiring movement. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Campaign Mounts to Declassify 9/11 Report’s References to Alleged Saudi Involvement
2014-08-07, Vice News
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:54:37
https://news.vice.com/article/campaign-mounts-to-declassify-911-reports-refer...

Nearly 13 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the extent of Saudi involvement in the deaths of almost 3,000 people remains unclear — but according to members of Congress and the families of victims, information about this has been suppressed ever since the publication of a 2002 congressional investigation into the plot. Prior to the release of the final report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration classified a 28-page section in the name of national security. The 28 pages make up part four of the report, a section titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” They are widely believed to implicate Saudi officials or describe support from Saudi intelligence for the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens. Former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who co-chaired the joint Senate-House investigation, dispensed with the equivocation and told VICE News that the redactions are a “cover up.” “I’ve said this since the first classification of the 28 pages,” he remarked. “It’s become more and more inexplicable as to why two administrations have denied the American people information that would help them better understand what happened on 9/11.” Graham said that the 28 pages describe the financing of the attacks. “Follow the money,” he said. “That will illuminate other significant aspects of 9/11.” The Saudi kingdom has always denied any complicity in the attacks.”

Note: Watch a video of Congressman Massie telling how shocked he was to read these 28 pages. Why aren't the major media reporting this important news? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.


The Lies They Told
2009-11-12, New York Times
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:53:17
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html

When Sept. 11, 2001, dawned, the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., went on full alert — to prepare for a training exercise that envisioned a sneak attack by Russian planes flying over the North Pole to bomb the United States, a prospect that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had dismissed as outdated in 1966. Later that morning, ... three F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to form a combat air patrol over Washington. But degraded radio transmission quality meant that the pilots were left clueless about the nature of their mission. On seeing the Pentagon in flames, the lead fighter pilot later explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat. I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.” As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, [Farmer] investigated the derelict conduct of the national security apparatus. Now that numerous transcripts and tapes have been declassified, [in his book The Ground Truth] Farmer draws on them to assail the government’s official depiction of 9/11 as so much public relations flimflam. Both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. Farmer ... was the attorney general of New Jersey and is the dean of the Rutgers School of Law,

Note: For more on Farmer's book, see a summary of this Time magazine article. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 9/11 news articles from reliable major media sources.


Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your Calls
2014-08-27, Popular Science
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:51:43
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/mysterious-phony-cell-towers-could-b...

Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America [marketers of the Crytophone 500], points me to a map that he and his customers have created, indicating 17 different phony cell towers known as “interceptors,” detected by the CryptoPhone 500 around the United States during the month of July alone. Interceptors look to a typical phone like an ordinary tower. Once the phone connects with the interceptor, a variety of “over-the-air” attacks become possible, from eavesdropping on calls and texts to pushing spyware to the device. “Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated,” Goldsmith says. “One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found 8 different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.” Who is running these interceptors and what are they doing with the calls? Goldsmith says we can’t be sure, but he has his suspicions. “Are some of them U.S. government interceptors?” [asks] Goldsmith. Interceptors vary widely in expense and sophistication – but in a nutshell, they are radio-equipped computers with software that can use arcane cellular network protocols and defeat the onboard encryption. For governments or other entities able to afford a price tag of “less than $100,000,” says Goldsmith, high-quality interceptors are quite realistic. Some interceptors are limited, only able to passively listen to either outgoing or incoming calls. But full-featured devices like the VME Dominator, available only to government agencies, can not only capture calls and texts, but even actively control the phone, sending out spoof texts, for example.

Note: Do you think the government might have put up fake cell towers to nab more data? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.


Guantanamo Defense Lawyer Resigns, Says U.S. Case Is 'Stacked'
2014-08-31, NPR
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:49:41
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/31/344576895/guantanamo-defense-lawyer-resigns-say...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [is] facing a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and potentially the death penalty. He was captured in 2003 but his case still hasn't gone to trial. Last week, Maj. Jason Wright one of the lawyers defending Mohammed resigned from the Army. He has accused the U.S. government of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights and due process guarantees and says it is crafting a "show trial." For nearly three years, he served on Mohammed's defense team. Wright formally resigned on Aug. 26. Wright [says] that it's hard to gain any client's trust, but it was especially hard with Mohammed. His former client is one of six "high-value detainees" being prosecuted at Guantanamo for offenses that could carry the death penalty. "All six of these men have been tortured by the U.S. government," he says. Wright says Mohammed in particular has faced a level of torture "beyond comprehension." He says his client was waterboarded by the CIA 183 times and subjected to over a week of sleep deprivation; there were threats that his family would be killed. "And those are just the declassified facts that I'm able to actually speak about," Wright says. Wright wasn't allowed to discuss too many details of the detainee abuse in court. "The CIA tortured these men. They've gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep that completely hidden from public view," Wright says. "So the statute that Congress passed has a number of protections to ensure that no information about the U.S. torture program will ever come out."

Note: Why hasn't this been covered by other major media in the US? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from reliable major media sources.


The US government can brand you a terrorist based on a Facebook post
2014-08-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:48:20
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/30/terrorist-watch-list-rul...

The US government’s web of surveillance is vast and interconnected. You can be pulled into the National Security Agency’s database quietly and quickly. Through ICREACH, a Google-style search engine created for the intelligence community, the NSA provides data on private communications to 23 government agencies. More than 1,000 analysts had access to that information. It was confirmed earlier this month that the FBI shares its master watchlist, the Terrorist Screening Database, with at least 22 foreign governments, countless federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, plus private contractors. The watchlist [is] based on [low] standards and secret evidence, which ensnares innocent people. Indeed, the standards are so low that the US government’s guidelines specifically allow for a single, uncorroborated source of information – including a Facebook or Twitter post – to serve as the basis for placing you on its master watchlist. Of the 680,000 individuals on that FBI master list, roughly 40% have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”, according to the Intercept. These individuals don’t even have a connection – as the government loosely defines it – to a designated terrorist group, but they are still branded as suspected terrorists. The US [government uses] a loose standard – so-called “reasonable suspicion” – in determining who, exactly, can be watchlisted. ["Reasonable suspicion"] requires neither “concrete evidence” nor “irrefutable evidence”. Instead, an official is permitted to consider “reasonable inferences” and “to draw from the facts in light of his/her experience”.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from reliable major media sources.


The Innocent on Death Row
2014-09-04, New York Times
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:46:18
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/the-innocent-on-death-row.html

In late September 1983, an 11-year-old girl named Sabrina Buie was found murdered in a soybean field in Robeson County. She had been raped, beaten with sticks and suffocated with her own underwear. Within days, police got confessions from two local teenagers, Henry Lee McCollum, 19 at the time, and his half brother, Leon Brown, who was 15. Both were convicted and sentenced to death. On [September 2], a state judge ordered both men freed after multiple pieces of evidence, some of which had never been turned over to defense lawyers, proved that neither Mr. McCollum nor Mr. Brown was responsible for the crime. DNA taken from a cigarette found at the crime scene matched a different man, Roscoe Artis, who is already serving life in prison for a similar murder committed just weeks after Sabrina Buie’s killing. Virtually everything about the arrests, confessions, trial and convictions of Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown was polluted by official error and misconduct. No physical evidence linked either man to the crime, so their false confessions, given under duress, were the heart of the case the prosecutors mounted against them. Both men’s confessions were handwritten by police after hours of intense questioning without a lawyer or parent present. Neither was recorded, and both men have maintained their innocence ever since. Equally disturbing, Mr. Artis was a suspect from the start. Three days before the murder trial began, police requested that a fingerprint from the crime scene be tested for a match with Mr. Artis, who had a long history of sexual assaults against women. The test was never done, and prosecutors never revealed the request to the defense.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Homeland Security was built to fend off terrorists. Why's it so busy arming cops to fight average Americans?
2014-09-02, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:44:46
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/homeland-security-depart...

America has raged against the appalling behavior of the local police in Ferguson, Missouri, and for good reason: automatic rifles pointed at protesters, tank-like armored trucks blocking marches, the teargassing and arresting of reporters, tactics unfit even for war zones. [But ire] should also be focused on the federal government agency that has enabled the rise of military police, and so much more: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The 240,000-employee [agency] has been the primary arms dealer for out-of-control local cops in Ferguson and beyond, handing out tens of billions of dollars in grants for military equipment in the last decade with little to no oversight. Police can act like paramilitary forces to combat the most mundane crimes without much worry of the consequences. But the problem with DHS is much larger than just combat gear: Homeland Security is also transferring tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in high-tech spying technology to local police through a sprawling backroom operation surveilling your neighborhood, much of which may be unconstitutional. DHS has its own fleet of Predator drones roaming the US border and far beyond, which it has loaned out to police over 500 times. Homeland Security is also handing out millions of dollars to local police to “accelerate and facilitate the adoption” of smaller drones that police can fly themselves. Cops claim they want these “middleman” drones for “emergencies,” but ... documents show they’ll end up using them for “crowd control” and “intelligence gathering”.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing terrorism news articles from reliable major media sources.


US telecom giants call on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed internet
2014-08-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:43:06
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/29/us-telecoms-fcc-block-high-sp...

The US telecom industry called on the Federal Communications Commission ... to block two cities’ plans to expand high-speed internet services to their residents. USTelecom, which represents telecom giants Verizon, AT&T and others, wants the FCC to block expansion of two popular municipally owned high-speed internet networks. Chattanooga has the largest high-speed internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB, has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and other companies have previously sued unsuccessfully to stop EPB’s fibre optic roll out. Wilson [North Carolina], a town of a little more than 49,000 people, launched Greenlight, its own service offering high-speed internet, after complaints about the cost and quality of Time Warner cable’s service. Time Warner lobbied the North Carolina senate to outlaw the service and similar municipal efforts. In January this year, the FCC issued the “Gigabit City Challenge”, calling on providers to offer gigabit service in at least one community in each state by 2015. The challenge has come amid intense lobbying from cable and telecoms firms to stop municipal rivals and new competitors including Google from building and expanding high speed networks.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


What Halliburton's $1.1 Billion Spill Settlement Means for BP
2014-09-02, Bloomberg Businessweek
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:41:13
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-02/what-halliburtons-1-dot-1-bil...

Halliburton has wrapped up most of its lingering liability for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill with a $1.1 billion settlement announced on [September 2]. The pact will resolve accusations that Halliburton’s cement work on the ill-fated Macondo well contributed to a disaster that killed 11 rig workers and spewed millions of barrels of crude into the gulf. First off, the timing of the settlement announcement may signal that U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is nearing a decision on the Big Question of how to apportion overall blame for the spill—and, more specifically, what kind of additional legal bill faces BP as the main operator of the well. The British company has already paid out more than $28 billion and faces additional liability that could total an additional tens of billions. The $1.1 billion settlement represents Halliburton’s biggest payout yet in the disaster. Transocean, owner of the drilling rig, settled a batch of claims last year for $1.4 billion. Beyond settlement payouts, the Gulf spill litigation is costing the various companies implicated in the disaster enormous legal fees—or, more precisely, it’s costing their insurance carriers large amounts. Prior to settlement, Halliburton had incurred fees and expenses of $294 million, $263 million of which was covered by insurance, according to a filing in July. Halliburton had set aside reserves of $1.3 billion for costs related to the spill.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Home Office worker investigating Rotherham child abuse 'had data stolen'
2014-09-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:39:36
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/01/home-office-rotherham-child-ab...

A Home Office official who investigated the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham accused the council of being involved in the unauthorised removal of information from her office. Her report in 2002 suggested there were then more than 270 victims of the scandal, which was finally exposed last week with revelations that at least 1,400 children were abused from 1997 to 2013. She [said] that she had sent her report to both the council and the Home Office on a Friday, but when she returned on Monday she found her office had been raided. "They'd gained access to the office and taken my data, so out of the number of filing cabinets, there was one drawer emptied and it was emptied of my data. It had to be an employee of the council," she said. The Home Office researcher, [whose name was not released], also said she had been accused of being insensitive when she told one official that most of the perpetrators were from Rotherham's Pakistani community. A female colleague talked to her about the incident. "She said you must never refer to that again – you must never refer to Asian men. And her other response was to book me on a two-day ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues." The Home Office researcher said that at one point the council tried to get her sacked and the report was never published. A draft of the report severely criticised agencies working to tackle the child exploitation in the area, including "alleged indifference towards, and ignorance of, child sexual exploitation on the part of senior managers". It said: "Responsibility was continuously placed on young people's shoulders rather than with the suspected abusers."

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.


Double mastectomy may not be best choice for survival, study says
2014-09-02, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:38:15
http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Study-Double-mastectomy-may-not-be-best-...

Women diagnosed with early-stage cancer in one breast are increasingly choosing to have both breasts removed to reduce their chances of getting cancer again, but they'll likely have no better chance at long-term survival than those who had a far less invasive lumpectomy followed by radiation, researchers said [on September 2]. Researchers at Stanford University and the Cancer Prevention Institute of California in Fremont reached the conclusion after taking the largest and perhaps most comprehensive look at the survival rates for the most common surgical choices for early-stage breast cancer: double mastectomy, a single mastectomy and lumpectomy followed by radiation. "We thought we'd maybe see some survival benefit with bilateral mastectomy, particularly in younger women," said Dr. Allison Kurian, assistant professor of health research and policy at Stanford and lead author of the study. "We looked and looked, and saw no difference there." For their study, the researchers relied on data from the California Cancer Registry, which involved nearly 190,000 cases or virtually every woman in California diagnosed with one cancerous tumor in a single breast between 1998 and 2011. More than half were treated with lumpectomies, which involve removing just the tumor and surrounding tissue. The study showed the rate of bilateral mastectomies rose from 2 percent of all patients in 1998 to 12.3 percent in 2011, an increase most pronounced in younger white women. In that group, the percentage of patients younger than 40 choosing to have both breasts removed skyrocketed from 3.6 percent in 1998 to 33 percent in 2011.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


Journal questions validity of autism and vaccine study
2014-08-27, CNN
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:36:41
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/health/irpt-cdc-autism-vaccine-study/index.html

The debate over a link between autism and vaccines continues. A study published earlier this month concluded African-American boys are more at risk for autism if they're given the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine before the age of 2. The study author says researchers at the [CDC] knew about the link in 2004 -- and covered it up. CDC researchers are standing by their original findings: that there is no link between autism and vaccination schedules. The new study was funded by the Focus Autism Foundation, which says it is dedicated to exposing the causes of autism, "focusing on the role of vaccinations." The study has since been removed from the public domain pending further investigation, according to Translational Neurodegeneration. In an online statement, the scientific journal said the paper had been removed "because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions." Brian Hooker, author of the study and a biochemical engineer, found African-American boys who were given the MMR vaccine before age 24 months were more likely to be diagnosed with autism. Hooker said he analyzed the same set of data that was the basis for a 2004 study done by researchers at the [CDC]. Hooker said he began his research after he was contacted by one of the original study authors, William Thompson, in November 2013. Thompson is a senior scientist with the CDC, where he has worked since 1998. Hooker said he believes the increased risk for African-American boys he found was not identified in the CDC study because, by excluding children without birth certificates, the CDC study results were skewed.

Note: For more on this study, read this news report. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccines news articles from reliable major media sources.


Why is solar booming?
2014-08-01, Time Magazine
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:35:02
http://time.com/3204258/wall-street-goes-green

The clean-power revolution is for real. Wind and solar have gotten much cheaper, less novel and more predictable. Green electricity is no longer avant-garde; it has produced more than half of new U.S. generating capacity this year. Wind has tripled since 2008, while solar is up 1,200%. This is terrific news–for homeowners who reduce their electric bills by going solar, ratepayers whose utilities save them money by buying wind power, and the planet. But there’s a deeper message. People assume the future of clean energy depends on gee-whiz technological innovations: better solar panels and wind turbines, cheaper batteries and biofuels. And we will need those advances in the long term to cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050. But the biggest advances in the near term are likely to be boring financial innovations. The innovation that launched the sunshine revolution was the solar lease, which has helped homeowners and businesses install rooftop systems without having to plunk down tens of thousands of dollars up front. Now they can sign 20-year contracts with no money down to lease panels from installers like SolarCity or Sunrun, then make payments out of the savings on their electric bills. Now we’re moving into the next phase of the renewable revolution. Those 20-year leases look a lot like mortgages, auto loans or other financial instruments that Wall Street routinely packages into securities. And Wall Street has begun to package solar contracts into securities. The market for commercial solar securities has grown from less than $1 billion to $15 billion since 2008.

Note: You can find the text for this article at http://investorshub.advfn.com/.... For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing new energy developments news articles from reliable major media sources. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Researchers Develop Transparent Solar Concentrator That Could Cover Windows, Electronics
2014-08-24, Huffington Post
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:33:42
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/transparent-solar-concentrator_n_570...

Scientists at Michigan State University announced this week the creation of a “transparent luminescent solar concentrator” that could turn windows and even cellphone screens into solar-power generators. The material works by absorbing light in the invisible spectrum (ultraviolet and near infrared) and then re-emitting it in the infrared. The infrared light is then channeled to the edge of the clear surface, where thin strips of photovoltaic cells generate the power. Because we cannot see infrared or ultraviolet light, the material remains transparent even while concentrating sunlight. Previous luminescent solar concentrators have been developed, but they emitted light in the visible spectrum, creating a stained-glass effect. “No one wants to sit behind colored glass,” Richard Lunt, who leads the lab researching this new technology, said. The new technology is promising, but needs to be made more efficient. Researchers say that the solar conversion efficiency is around one percent. Ideally, this could be increased to more than five percent. Luminescent solar concentrators are less efficient than traditional photovoltaics, which absorb a larger range of wavelengths, but they could allow energy harvesting on surfaces that would otherwise never be used to generate power. The transparent technology could be used in a variety of applications, Lunt said, and its affordability means it has the potential for eventual commercial or industrial use. “Ultimately we want to make solar harvesting surfaces that you do not even know are there,” he said. The researchers' findings were published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials in July.

Note: Why isn't the major media reporting this exciting development? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing new energy inventions news articles from reliable major media sources. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Tech companies' leftover food benefiting S.F. needy
2014-08-21, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:32:22
http://www.sfgate.com/food/insidescoop/article/Tech-companies-leftover-food-b...

Catching a glimpse of the Food Runners bicycle courier pulling a trailer fully loaded with trays of food might become something of a downtown San Francisco rite of passage. Food Runners, established by Mary Risley in 1987, takes food that would otherwise be thrown away and delivers it to needy people at Community Awareness & Treatment Services, A Woman's Place, Cityteam Ministries and Door Clinic, among many others. With the amount of donated food now coming in, Risley hopes to expand deliveries to after-school programs as well. A year ago, Risley estimates that Food Runners was picking up 10 tons of food a week; today, that number is up 50 percent, to 15 tons. There are about 100 new donors, and nearly all of them are tech companies - familiar names like Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, Uber, Google, Adobe and Airbnb, just to name a few, plus caterers like Cater2Me and ZeroCater that service small startups. "Millennials have found us," says Risley. "Anything you say about the Millennials being out of it is not true. Well, maybe they are out of it, but not when it comes to generosity." ZeroCater, which caters to eBay and FourSquare, among others, estimates that a company usually orders about one pound of food per person. Since the head count varies from day to day and extra food is always ordered, a good amount is left over. That is where Food Runners comes in. The company - be it caterer or restaurant - calls Food Runners. The food gets picked up and delivered the same day. Food Runners' No. 1 message to the public should be clear, says Risley: Don't throw food away.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Radical kindness: the banker who gave it all away
2009-04-10, The Age (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2014-09-09 06:30:50
http://www.theage.com.au/national/radical-kindness-the-banker-who-gave-it-all...

Philip Wollen, at first glance, does not look like a radical. Wollen is a former merchant banker. He was a vice-president of Citibank when he was 34, and a general manager at Citicorp. Australian Business Magazine named him one of the top 40 headhunted executives in Australia. But about 1990 — he is not exactly sure of the year — Wollen decided to give away 90 per cent of his capital, a process he describes as "reverse tithing". Since then Wollen has donated millions to improving the environment and helping the powerless — children, animals and the terminally ill — around the world. He sponsors the anti-whaling vessel the Sea Shepherd and the South Australian Children's Ballet Company, and has built schools, orphanages, lion parks and sanctuaries. His Winsome Constance Kindness Trust supports more than 400 projects in 40 countries. Wollen says his aim is to die broke, to give away all he owns with "warm hands", and that he is on track to do so. Mostly he does his work away from the public gaze. The trust's website says "we don't want your money", and its mission statement is ambitious: "to promote kindness towards all other living beings and enshrine it as a recognisable trait in the Australian character and consciousness." [Wollen] agrees with philosopher Peter Singer that animal rights pose "the greatest moral issue facing humanity since the abolition of slavery".

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie
2014-08-15, The Daily Beast
Posted: 2014-09-02 11:14:21
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-c...

The officers got the wrong man, but charged him anyway—with getting his blood on their uniforms. Police in Ferguson, Missouri, once charged a man with destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him. [A] 52-year-old welder named Henry Davis ... had been arrested for an outstanding warrant that proved to actually be for another man of the same surname, but a different middle name and Social Security number. The booking officer had no other reason to hold Davis, who ended up in Ferguson only because he missed the exit for St. Charles and then pulled off the highway because the rain was so heavy he could not see to drive. The cop who had pulled up behind him must have run his license plate and assumed he was that other Henry Davis. Davis said the cop approached his vehicle, grabbed his cellphone from his hand, cuffed him and placed him in the back seat of the patrol car, without a word of explanation. The booking officer ... proceeded to escort him to a one-man cell that already had a man in it asleep on the lone bunk. Davis balked at being a second man in a one-man cell. The booking officer summoned a number of fellow cops. One opened the cell door while another suddenly charged, propelling Davis inside and slamming him against the back wall. [A] female officer allegedly lifted Davis’ head as the cop who had initially pushed him into the cell reappeared. “He ran in and kicked me in the head,” Davis recalled. “Paramedics came. They said it was too much blood. I had to go to the hospital.” A federal magistrate ruled that the [police] perjury about the “property damage” charges was too minor to constitute a violation of due process and that Davis’ injuries were ... too minor to warrant a finding of excessive force. Never mind that a CAT scan taken after the incident confirmed that he had suffered a concussion.

Note: If you are willing to know how bad it gets, read the entire article at the link above. Then read an educational article on the skewed reporting of the New York Times on the Michael Brown murder. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government surveillance news articles from reliable major media sources.


After A Traffic Stop, Teen Was 'Almost Another Dead Black Male'
2014-08-15, NPR
Posted: 2014-09-02 11:12:56
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/340419821/after-a-traffic-stop-teen-was-almost-...

Alex Landau, who is African-American, was adopted by a white couple as a child and grew up in largely white, middle-class suburbs of Denver. "I thought that love would conquer all and skin color really didn't matter," [his mother, Patsy] Hathaway [said, speaking to her son]. "I had to learn the really hard way when they almost killed you." That was in 2009, when Landau, then a college student, was stopped by Denver police officers and severely beaten. Landau was 19 at the time, driving around Denver with a friend in the passenger seat. He noticed red and blue lights behind him. The officer who pulled him over "explained I had made an illegal left turn, and to step out of the car," Landau says. Landau thought he was safe. He wasn't in handcuffs, he says, and he'd already been patted down. "Plus there's three officers on the scene. And I had never had a negative interaction with police in my life. "So I ask them, 'Can I please see a warrant before you continue the search?' " Landau says. "And they grab me and began to hit me in the face. I was hit several times, and I remember gasping for air" and spitting blood, he says. "And then I hear an officer shout out, 'He's reaching for a gun,' " he tells his mother. "I immediately started yelling, 'No, I'm not. I'm not reaching for anything.' " Landau felt a gun against his head, he says. "And I expected to be shot. And at that point I lost consciousness. ... It took 45 stitches to close up the lacerations in my face alone," Landau says. I was just another black face in the streets, and I was almost another dead black male." In 2011, Alex was awarded a $795,000 settlement by the City of Denver.

Note: Listen to the very moving three-minute audio of this white mother and her black son who was nearly killed by police simply for being black. Then read an educational article on the skewed reporting of the New York Times on the Michael Brown murder. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing police corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


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