News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The week before the G8 convenes once again is a natural time to reminisce about the good old days, but this is about more than nostalgia. Even in today's age of austerity, the G8 has a chance to ... tackle the forgotten scandal of hunger. A child dies every 10 seconds from malnutrition – not because their parents are reckless, stupid or lazy – but because they were unlucky enough to be born at a time and place where there is too little food available or, perhaps more tragically, where people cannot afford to buy the food that is. One in eight people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight. That's 870 million people. The total population of the G8 is just 890 million. Just imagine the urgency to act if those 870 million lived in the G8 rather than in Africa, South Asia and other poor countries. Protecting poor people from land grabs, making it easier for them to find out what companies and their governments are doing and stopping the ridiculous situation where G8 members' policies actively encourage land to be used for growing fuel rather than food: all these will help. But perhaps the biggest step forward the G8 could make would be to end the scandal that sees companies dodge more than $160bn a year in tax they should pay poor countries. It is money that could be invested in farms – providing the seeds, equipment and know how to get more food from the same plot of land. And it could be used to provide safety nets to help people whose ability to earn a living has failed to keep pace with rising food prices.
Jack Abramoff had just delivered a primer on the corruption of Congress when a University of San Francisco graduate student in public affairs posed the question: Does ethical lobbying exist, or is the cutting of moral corners just part of the job description? Abramoff, whose mastery of capital sleaze earned him a fortune and then a prison term, estimated that 95 percent of the thousands of lobbyists who populate Washington are ethical. He was, by his own admission, among the 5 percent. "The problem is, when you're one of those (unethical) lobbyists, you will be able to crush the other lobbyists," said Abramoff, now 55, repentant after 43 months in federal prison and on a crusade to reform the system he exploited so adroitly. Abramoff's reform plan ... would expand the definition of lobbyist to anyone (person or corporation) that tries to influence legislation, impose a limit on campaign contributions to $500 per election cycle and prohibit legislators, staffers and administration decisionmakers from lobbying activity for 10 years after leaving government. In Abramoff's eyes, well-directed money is the only way to overcome the corrosive influence of strategically distributed money in Washington. He has written a book, Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist, and become an advocate of political reform. He still owes nearly $44 million in restitution for defrauding his tribal clients.
Note: Abramoff, who manipulated tens of millions of dollars, was sentenced to a total of 10 years in jail, yet was released after less than four years. At the same time petty thieves caught three times in many US states are sentenced to life in prison. Where's the justice? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Gunmen shot to death the Pakistani government’s top prosecutor ... in a case that accuses former military ruler Pervez Musharraf of involvement in the 2007 assassination of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, police said. The gunmen opened fire on Chaudhry Zulfikar’s car as he was leaving his home. The assailants escaped. Chaudhry Zulfikar was involved in a number of high-profile cases. Zulfikar’s slaying was a rare episode of violence in the capital, which has so far seen none of the bombings or other attacks launched by the Taliban against secular politicians. Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan for nine years before going into self-exile in 2008, returned in March in an ultimately futile bid to run for prime minister. He has been under house arrest for more than two weeks, facing allegations in various cases linked to his tenure. In the case unfolding in Rawalpindi, prosecutors allege that Musharraf was culpable for Bhutto’s murder for not providing her with enough security. He has denied the allegations. Bhutto’s son, Bilawal, who now leads the Pakistan People’s Party, has alleged that Musharraf was behind it. Proceedings in the case have been bogged down for years, and resumed only recently with Musharraf’s return. Speculation was rife ... that Zulfikar was killed to disrupt that case.
Note: It is interesting to note that only weeks before her death in 2007, Benazir Bhutto said in a BBC interview that Osama bin Laden had already been killed. To read quotes from this BBC interview, click here. For a CNN article revealing the Bhutto was planning to give US lawmakers a report on vote rigging on the day she was assassinated, click here. Could it be that the prosecutor in the article above was killed because he knew too much?
As political leaders arrive for the 61st annual Bilderberg conference in London, police have implemented a no-fly zone and used anti-terror laws to close-off streets to traffic. The annual meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group, which features some of the world's most powerful policymakers and politicians, is a lightning rod for anti-capitalist protestors who see the private club as a conspiracy to "fix the global economy" for private interests. The meeting being held at the Grove Hotel in the North London suburb of Watford is being attended by Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state, Timothy Geithner, the former U.S. treasury secretary, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and George Osborne, the U.K. finance minister. The heads of Barclays, McKinsey & Company, BP, Goldman Sachs and HSBC will also be in attendance as well as Google's Eric Schmidt and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Around 200 protesters gathered outside the hotel on Thursday afternoon. A large 7-foot fence had been erected around the hotel building where the group is due to meet. Cars featuring blacked out-windows had been entering the grounds of the hotel, amid protesters shouting "pay your taxes" and "scum". It is predicted the number of protesters will swell as the meeting progresses into the weekend. U.K. opposition politician Michael Meacher travelled to the event to speak at the protest on Thursday, despite his Labour Party colleague and shadow finance minister, Ed Balls, attending the Bilderberg conference. "World elite of finance capitalism meets secretly to fix global economy in own interests," he said on Twitter.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secret societies, click here.
Using valuable food crops like corn and sugar cane to produce biofuels has been a highly controversial topic in an age of imminent food crises. But nobody is growing corn on the former strip mines of Eastern Kentucky. Surface mining left its mark on the Appalachian landscape through much of the 20th century, as large swaths of native forest were replaced with sparse, scrubby grassland. But University of Kentucky forestry professor Chris Barton sees in the compacted soil of old strip mines the possibility of using former surface mine land for short-rotation forestry—in order to produce fuel. Here's how it would work: Fast-growing, native trees like black locust could be grown and harvested every five to 10 years; then, the woodchips would be burned in an oxygen-restricted condition to produce combustible gases that in turn could be used to generate energy and heat. After a few generations of short-rotation harvests, the land could be transitioned to a long-term forest. Barton is the founder of Green Forests Work, a nonprofit spin-off of the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative that seeks to reforest lands scarred by mining with native trees—all the while helping to rebuild struggling local economies. Since GFW was launched in 2008, more than 5,000 volunteers have planted nearly 1 million trees on former surface mine sites. And last year, the program received a $300,000 grant, enabling Barton to add a couple full-time staff members.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
In 1976, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy — known as Dr. V — retired. He decided to devote his remaining years to eliminating needless blindness among India’s poor. Twelve million people are blind in India, the vast majority of them from cataracts, which tend to strike people in India before 60. Blindness robs a poor person of his livelihood and with it, his sense of self-worth; it is often a fatal disease. Dr. V started by establishing an 11-bed hospital with six beds reserved for patients who could not pay and five for those who would pay modest rates. He persuaded his siblings to join him in mortgaging their houses, pooling their savings and pawning their jewels to build it. Today, the Aravind Eye Care System is a network of hospitals, clinics, community outreach efforts, factories, and research and training institutes in south India that has treated more than 32 million patients and has performed 4 million surgeries. Aravind’s story is well-told in depth in a new book, Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion. Aravind is not just a health success, it is a financial success. Aravind’s core services are sustainable: patient care and the construction of new hospitals are funded by fees from paying patients. And at Aravind, patients pay only if they want to. The majority of Aravind’s patients pay only a symbolic amount, or nothing at all. Dr V was guided by the teachings of the radical Indian nationalist[, philosopher] and mystic Sri Aurobindo ... who located man’s search for his divine nature not in turning away from the world, but by engaging with it.
Note: For lots more on this most inspiring business model, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Pushpa Basnet doesn't need an alarm clock. Every morning, the sounds of 40 children wake her up in the two-story home she shares with them. All of these children once lived in Nepal's prisons. This 28-year-old woman has saved every one of them from a life behind bars. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. When no local guardian is available, an arrested parent often must choose between bringing their children to jail with them or letting them live on the streets. "It's not fair for (these) children to live in the prison because they haven't done anything wrong," said Basne. "My mission is to make sure no child grows up behind prison walls." Since 2005, she has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents. She runs a day care program for children under 6 and a residential home where mostly older children receive education, food, medical care and a chance to live a more normal life. Basnet decided to start a day care to get incarcerated children out from behind the prison walls. "When I started, nobody believed in me," Basnet said. "People thought I was crazy. They laughed at me." But Basnet was undaunted. She got friends to donate money, and she rented a building in Kathmandu to house her new organization, the Early Childhood Development Center. Two years later, Basnet established the Butterfly Home, a children's home where she herself has lived for the past five years. While she now has a few staff members who help her, Basnet is still very hands on. "We do cooking, washing, shopping," she said. "It's amazing, I never get tired. (The children) give me the energy. ... The smiles of my children keep me motivated."
Note: Check out the Early Childhood Development Center website at www.ecdcnepal.org and see how to help. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
On [June 6], a heady mix of politicians, bank bosses, billionaires, chief executives and European royalty will swoop up the elegant drive of the Grove hotel, north of Watford, to begin the annual Bilderberg conference. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat's year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group's founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin. It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. Michael Meacher, MP ... describes the conference as "an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach of public scrutiny". The Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706). The charity receives regular five-figure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP. The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008, since when the charity has omitted its donors' names from its accounts.
Note: For a list of this year's Bilderberg participants, which include 90-year-old Henry Kissinger, click here. For lots more on secret societies from reliable sources, click here.
No [encounters with demonstrators] will take place in Watford this week, as the Bilderberg, the annual conference for 140 of the world’s most powerful, meet for four days at The Grove, a Ł300-a-night golf hotel. The entire hotel has been booked out, and a high fence erected around the exclusion zone. Armed checkpoints have been set up on local roads, and locals must show their passports to enter their own driveways. The Bilderberg was founded in 1954 ... at the Bilderberg Hotel, near Arnhem. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was the chair. In that first meeting, the participants ... debated the Communist threat and the prospect of European integration. Publicly, the group says it is still merely a debating society – a forum for leaders to "listen, reflect and gather insights" unbound by official policy positions. But while they rankle at the conspiracy theorists, former leaders of the Bilderberg conferences says they were the most important events they ever went to, and the freedom of speaking away from the ears of Whitehall officials meant the discussions that took place decisively shaped modern Europe. On the agenda is economic growth, big data, Africa, medical research and the rise of cyber warfare. The future of the welfare state is likely to be discussed, as one topic is titled "jobs, entitlement and debt". Another session is called simply "current affairs".
Note: For a list of this year's Bilderberg participants, which include 90-year-old Henry Kissinger, click here. For lots more on secret societies from reliable sources, click here.
The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. Now it was the turn of the people of Watford to speak. What would they make of this international three-day policy summit, with its heavyweight delegate list bulging with billionaire financiers, party leaders and media moguls, protected by the biggest security operation Watford has ever seen? At one point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, [Chief Inspector] Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of breath. "Eighteen months?" The reason for all the secrecy? "Terrorism". After 59 years of Bilderberg guests scuttling about in the shadows, ducking lenses and dodging the news, that's the rationale we're given? The same rationale, presumably, is behind the Great Wall of Watford, a concrete-and-wire security fence encircling the hotel. As ugly as it is unnecessary, it looks like the kind of thing you throw yourself against in a stalag before being machine-gunned from a watchtower. Appropriately fascistic, you might say, if you regard fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power", as Mussolini put it. The same threat of "terrorism" was used to justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they had "no specific intelligence" regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984.
Note: For a list of this year's Bilderberg participants, which include 90-year-old Henry Kissinger, click here. For lots more on secret societies from reliable sources, click here.
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA. PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority. Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. Government officials and the document itself made clear that the NSA regarded the identities of its private partners as PRISM’s most sensitive secret, fearing that the companies would withdraw from the program if exposed. “98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we don’t harm these sources,” the briefing’s author wrote in his speaker’s notes.
Note: For graphs and lots more on the Prism program, see the Guardian article at this link. Technically, U.S. officials are not allowed to mine personal data from U.S. citizens. Yet if U.K. authorities mine data on U.S. citizens, they can share it freely with officials in the U.S. and vice versa. There is evidence that this happens quite frequently, thus circumventing privacy protections. For an excellent article which goes deep into this issue, click here.
The Guardian [has] released a classified court order requiring Verizon to turn over records of all domestic phone calls to the National Security Agency. The revelation has led to a renewed debate over the legality and policy merits of indiscriminate government surveillance of Americans. The court order, issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, only sought metadata — a fancy word for information like what numbers you called, what time you made the calls, and how long the calls were. The order does not seek the audio of calls. Of course, it’s possible the NSA has other programs collecting the contents of calls. In 2006 a whistleblower reported the existence of a secret, NSA-controlled room in an AT&T switching facility in San Francisco. So it’s possible the NSA is using rooms like that to listen to everyone’s phone calls. But all we know for sure is that the NSA has been requesting information about our phone calls. We only have proof of spying on Verizon customers, but it’s hard to imagine the NSA limiting its surveillance program to one company. There are probably similar orders in effect for AT&T and CenturyLink, the other major telephone companies. The order includes hints that the NSA is also collecting information from cellular customers. In addition to phone numbers and call times, the order seeks information about the specific cell phone tower the customer used to connect to the network during each call. Cellphones make calls using the closest tower. So if the NSA knows you made a call using a specific tower, they can safely assume you were near that tower at the time of the call.
Note: For graphs and lots more on the Prism program, see the Guardian article at this link. Technically, U.S. officials are not allowed to mine personal data from U.S. citizens. Yet if U.K. authorities mine data on U.S. citizens, they can share it freely with officials in the U.S. and vice versa. There is evidence that this happens quite frequently, thus circumventing privacy protections. For an excellent article which goes deep into this issue, click here.
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has accused the FBI in court papers of having impeded Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by withholding information about a Florida connection to the ... attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The information ... includes a recently declassified FBI report that ties a Saudi family who once lived in Sarasota “to individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” “The FBI’s failure to call (to the Joint Inquiry’s attention) documents finding ‘many connections’ between Saudis living in the United States and individuals associated with the terrorist attack(s) … interfered with the Inquiry’s ability to complete its mission,” said Graham, co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry. Graham said the FBI kept the 9/11 Commission in the dark, too. He said co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton and executive director Philip Zelikow all told him they were unaware of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation. Moreover, Graham stated that Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce, the Bureau’s second in command, personally intervened to block him from speaking with the special agent-in-charge of the Sarasota investigation. “I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the Sept. 11 attacks,” Florida’s former governor said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the 9/11 attacks, click here.
Increasing housing prices and the stock market's posting all-time highs haven't helped the plight most Americans. The average U.S. household has recovered only 45 percent of the wealth they lost during the recession, according to a report released yesterday from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This finding is a very different picture than one painted in a report earlier this year by the Fed that calculated Americans as a whole had regained 91 percent of their losses. The earlier number is based on aggregate household-net-worth data [which] isn't adjusted for inflation, population growth or the nature of the wealth. Much of recovery in net worth is because of the stock market, which means most of the improvement has been a boon only to wealthy families. "Clearly, the 91 percent recovery of wealth losses portrayed by the aggregate nominal measure paints a different picture than the 45 percent recovery of wealth losses indicated by the average inflation-adjusted household measure," the report said. "Considering the uneven recovery of wealth across households, a conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified," the researchers said. Almost two-thirds of the increase in aggregate household wealth is due to rising stock prices. This has disproportionately benefited the richest households: About 80 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on wealth inequality, click here.
An estimated $750 million is missing from Angola's treasury [after] a deal with Russia facilitated by a Swiss bank and a shell company registered in Britain's Isle of Man, a report by a corruption watchdog group said. Russian and French arms dealers got away with $263 million, Angola's president reportedly stashed away more than $36 million, and three Angolan officials and a former Russian legislator got away with smaller amounts. Another $400 million is unaccounted for, according to Corruption Watch UK. The Angolan exposé is the latest of a slew of reports on corruption, its cost to development, and how it is aided by bankers and shell companies that keep secret the identities of owners. Angola has long been accused of siphoning off payments from its massive oil production, worth about $40 billion in 2011 according to Revenue Watch. They enrich a small coterie surrounding President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, while nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Dos Santos has ruled Angola for 33 years. The $750 million that disappeared from Angola was supposed to repay a $1.5 billion debt to Russia for help in its 27-year civil war. Angola paid with promissory notes on future oil shipments, but those notes went through shell companies that milked much of the money, the report said. Russian and French arms dealers took most of the money owed to Russia, the report said. The illegal transfer of capital from Africa has surpassed $50 billion a year.
Note: Global arms dealers work feverishly behind the scenes to enflame wars so that their huge profits keep rolling. Yet governments around the world seem reluctant to try to stop or even monitor this lucrative trade. Do you think there might be any collusion here?
Dr. David Healy is an internationally renowned psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist, and author. He was responsible for submitting the key document that led to New York State's successful fraud action against GlaxoSmithKline. [Q.] Youve written at your blog that evidence-based medicine and RCTs [random controlled trials] are ... simply not the answer to determining cause and effect, [because] theyre quite likely to hide rather than reveal a problem like antidepressant induced suicidality. How in fact do RCTs hide such information? [Dr. Healy:] There are ... specific problems like miscoding, where suicidality becomes nausea or emotional lability or even treatment non-responsiveness. There is also the problem of mislocation – patients on placebo end up being given problems they never had – and of nonexistent patients, who dont of course have adverse events. Beyond that, there are more sophisticated tricks that companies can and do play – such as claiming that increased rates of a problem on a drug are not really evidence of an increase in rates if the data are not statistically significant. In this way, companies have hidden many more heart attacks on Vioxx and Avandia or suicidal acts on SSRIs than have been hidden by miscoding or mislocation. When it comes to adverse events, trials almost never get the right answer. The deeper problem ... is the combination of product patents, prescription-only status, and the use of clinical trials as a means of determining efficacy – in particular, when the data from those trials are not made available. This creates a perfect product ... which industry can manipulate to mean whatever they want them to mean.
Note: Dr. Healy is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and 20 books. For an excellent article going further into Dr. Healy's amazing work, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on health corruption and manipulations, click here.
If it weren't for Deric Lostutter (aka KYAnonymous), the Steubenville High School rape scandal may not have received the national attention it did. Lostutter is responsible for exposing the suspects' tweets, videos and Instagram photos that had bragged about the incident and were circulated among other students. But due to his ties to other hackers who (he claims) compromised the school's football team fan page, the FBI raided his home. If convicted for the hacking, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars. The football players found guilty of raping the 16-year-old victim? One player received a year in jail, the other received two years.
Note: For the full, revealing story on this, click here.
The government says 1 in 10 youths at juvenile detention facilities around the country reported having been sexually victimized by staff or by other youths. The study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that ... more than 1,300 youths [reported] victimization by adult staff. According to the bureau, about 2.5 percent of juveniles, or 450, reported a sexual incident involving another youth last year, and 7.7 percent, or 1,390, reported an incident involving facility staff. The survey mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act defines sexual victimization as any unwanted sexual activity between youth and all sexual activity between youth and adult staff. One in five victims of staff sexual misconduct reported experiencing physical force or threats. One in five said they were given drugs or alcohol to engage in sexual contact. "It's deeply troubling that staff — the very people charged with helping these young people turn their lives around — are the primary perpetrators of sexual abuse," said Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, an advocacy group. "Today's report illustrates the fundamental failure of many juvenile detention facilities to keep their youth safe, and to demand that staff uphold the most basic standards of professional behavior." There was marked improvement in the figures between 2008-09 and 2012. The rate of sexual victimization dropped from 12.6 percent to 9.9 percent in that period.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.
Twenty BBC employees have faced 36 allegations of sexually abusing children and teenage victims since the Jimmy Savile scandal rocked the corporation last year. The complaints about an unknown number of victims under the age of 18 have come to light in the six months since October, according to a Freedom of Information request to the BBC. The [20] have worked for the BBC in some capacity over the past five decades. The complaints were among a total of 152 recent and historic allegations of sexual abuse against 81 BBC employees and freelancers, including 48 about Savile. Half of the accused are current members of BBC staff or contributors, the FoI request revealed, and cases against five are being examined by the police. Of these, three have been suspended pending the outcome of the police investigations. Allegations about 25 current staff or freelance contributors had been reported to police, with no further action taken in 20 cases. Some of the allegations are expected to be passed to the Dame Janet Smith review, the judge-led inquiry into the culture and practices of the BBC in the Savile era. The 152 allegations are understood to be separate to the 37 cases of alleged sexual harassment at the BBC uncovered by Dinah Rose QC in her review, published on 2 May, that examined the past six years.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.
Eric Maundu never wanted to be a farmer. Raised in an agricultural community in Kenya, he learned early on to equate that way of life with unrewarding, sunbaked drudgery. Given the opportunity to go to college, he opted for a career that would take him as far away from plows, chickens and fertilizer as possible - electronics and computer science. Now, 14 years after moving to the Bay Area, the soft-spoken programmer is once again reaping and sowing crops - though this time with technological help. Maundu, 46, is the founder of Kijani Grows, an aquaponics company based in downtown Oakland. Using "nothing more than sticks, stones and a computer," Maundu fashions freestanding aquaponics systems, soilless gardens that are watered and fertilized by an integrated fish tank. The gardens are fully automated and (if Maundu's diet is anything to go by) very productive. "I come from a place that's very dry," Maundu explains. "Seeing any plant grow without soil completely changed my thinking." Quitting his job as a software engineer in San Francisco, he returned to Kenya, where he spent the next six months (and most of his money) designing a system that could grow vegetables using no soil and little water. Observing the environmental destruction that had happened in eastern Kenya during his absence because of overcultivation and deforestation, he wanted his system to be fully computer-guided. "Farmers take shortcuts because their work is hard and they need to do everything quickly," he says. "But what if something could grow the plants for me at nature's speed, and then I could just come get my food when I'm ready?"
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
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.