News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
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The Grab [is] a riveting new documentary which outlines the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources. What oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. “The 20th century had Opec,” says [Nate] Halverson ... a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec. [In] rural La Paz county, Arizona, a Saudi company bought about 15 square miles of farmland [and] drained the region’s aquifers beyond a generation’s worth of rain. Residents describe going without water, discovering empty wells, their houses cracked and sinking, with little recourse. The film connects their confusion to the despair of Zambian farmers displaced, via a complicated and westernized deeds system, by mercenary militias to make way for commercial farmland controlled by outside actors from various countries – China, Gulf states, the US. The culprit is not one country or company but a shadowy network of mercenary interests. Halverson and his team [obtained] ... a year’s worth of emails within the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group, founded by Erik Prince, who also founded and was the CEO of the military contracting company Blackwater – a notorious mercenary group during the US invasion of Iraq. The emails, from 2012, reveal a clear plan to obtain, by whatever means necessary, land in Africa to fulfill competing national interests. "I just want people to have great information ... because right now the people that have this information are the CIA, and Wall Street, and foreign governments and very wealthy people.”
Note: Why is the founder of Blackwater, a US defense contractor tied to countless scandals and criminal activities, buying up land in Africa? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The pharma firms behind blockbuster weight loss drugs could face up to 10,000 lawsuits from patients who claim the drugs caused debilitating side effects like stomach paralysis and 'tearing holes' in the food pipe. Ozempic and sister shots like Wegovy and Mounjaro have recently come under fire over claims that the injections cause a roster of complications patients were allegedly not warned about. One woman told DailyMail.com that she suffered life-threatening stomach paralysis after taking Mounjaro, and has now joined a massive lawsuit against its maker Eli Lilly and Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk. She claims she may never eat a solid meal again. Another said Ozempic caused so much internal damage she had to have her gallbladder removed, while another said the drug induced such violent vomiting it tore a hole in her esophagus. Now, Robert Peirce & Associates, a law firm based in Pittsburgh, estimates that the number of plaintiffs could explode to as many as 10,000. In addition to lawsuits, some patients have also claimed the drugs caused suicidal thoughts, psychosis, and appearance issues like deflated breasts. 'Unfortunately, the manufacturers of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists failed to adequately warn of the associated risks,' the Robert Peirce & Associates team wrote. Attorney Ken Moll ... said it was 'unconscionable' that the firms still hadn't added warnings to their labels which warn about the risk of gastroparesis and stomach paralysis.
Note: It is now estimated that 1 in 8 adults in the US have taken Ozempic or another weight-loss drug. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.
Bummer news for Gen X: A new study finds that the forgotten generation is being diagnosed with more cancer than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. “Our results speak to the rate of incidence per 100,000 people,” the researchers [said]. “Gen X is experiencing more cancer than their parents. They are outpacing both baby boomers and the Silent Generation.” The researchers analyzed the number of newly diagnosed cancer cases among Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980), baby boomers (1946-1964), and the Silent Generation (1928-1945). The study ... was published Monday in JAMA Network Open. The researchers noted that public health initiatives have led to “substantial declines” in smoking. “However, other suspected carcinogenic exposures are increasing,” the researchers reported. They said it seems likely that some of the growth is attributable to rising obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. In their study of 3.8 million cancer patients, researchers found there have been declines in lung and cervical cancers among Gen X women, but also “significant increases” in thyroid, kidney, rectal, endometrial, colon, pancreatic and ovarian cancers, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia. Among Gen X men, declines in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and lung, liver and gallbladder cancers have been offset by gains in thyroid, kidney, rectal, colon and prostate cancers and leukemia.
Note: This is a critically important issue that can bring people together across our polarized divides. Why is this not being thoroughly investigated? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.
The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan institute, working with U.S. partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS-CoV-2's defining feature. Much of this work was conducted in partnership with the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based scientific organization that, since 2002, has been awarded over $80 million in federal funding to research the risks of emerging infectious diseases. The laboratory pursued risky research that resulted in viruses becoming more infectious: Coronaviruses were grown from samples from infected animals and genetically reconstructed and recombined to create new viruses unknown in nature. In 2021, The Intercept published a leaked 2018 grant proposal for a research project named Defuse, which had been written as a collaboration between EcoHealth, the Wuhan institute and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. The Defuse project proposed to search for and create SARS-like viruses carrying spikes with a unique feature: a furin cleavage site — the same feature that enhances infectiousness in humans, making it capable of causing a pandemic. As the pandemic raged, their American collaborators failed to publicly reveal the existence of the Defuse proposal. One alarming detail — leaked to The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by current and former U.S. government officials — is that scientists ... fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019. One of the scientists had been named in the Defuse proposal as the person in charge of virus discovery work. [This] would be the most costly accident in the history of science. U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them.
Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video for a deeper dive into the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Covid vaccines could be partly to blame for the rise in excess deaths since the pandemic. Researchers from The Netherlands analysed data from 47 Western countries and discovered there had been more than three million excess deaths since 2020, with the trend continuing despite the rollout of vaccines and containment measures. Writing in the BMJ Public Health, the authors ... said: “Although Covid-19 vaccines were provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the Covid-19 virus, suspected adverse events have been documented as well. “Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination.” The study found that across Europe, the US and Australia there had been more than one million excess deaths in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, but also 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 and 2022. Researchers said the figure included deaths from Covid-19, but also the “indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection”. They warned that side effects linked to the Covid vaccine had included ischaemic stroke, acute coronary syndrome and brain haemorrhage, cardiovascular diseases, coagulation, haemorrhages, gastrointestinal events and blood clotting. German researchers have pointed out that the onset of excess mortality in early 2021 in the country coincided with the rollout of vaccines, which the team said “warranted further investigation”.
Note: 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 1,640,416 COVID vaccine injury reports, 37,647 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 216,757 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations. Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue.
For nearly nine years Anthony Fauci’s institute concealed plans to engineer a pandemic capable mpox virus with a case fatality rate of up to 15 percent, congressional investigators revealed in a new report. In June 2015, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases received formal approval from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Review Board for experiments expected to engineer an mpox virus with high transmissibility and moderate mortality. NIAID — the institute Fauci oversaw for nearly four decades and which underwrites most federally funded gain-of-function research — concealed the project’s approval from investigators with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the course of a 17 month-long investigation. [The] report describes the obstruction and secrecy around the mpox proposal as a case study in how the institute “oversees and accounts for the monitoring of potentially dangerous gain-of-function research of concern.” The revelations land amid global concerns about whether coronavirus gain-of-function research — research that might generate pathogens with increased pathogenicity or transmissibility — may have contributed to the worst pandemic in a century. The committee, in conjunction with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, is also investigating coronavirus gain-of-function research underwritten by NIAID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and faces similar stonewalling in that investigation.
Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The 9/11 Commission was ... created in 2002 one year after the terrorist attacks. Its objective was to learn how the attacks happened and to prevent another massive terror attack from occurring on U.S. soil again. No event since Sept. 11, 2001, has had such a profound effect on the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic that began three years ago. Thirty-six months later, the death toll stands at more than 1.14 million Americans and more than 6.8 million people worldwide. Businesses were shut down; some never recovered. Schools were shuttered. Mental health issues, alcoholism, drug use and suicides skyrocketed from the isolation and lack of interaction with family and friends. So, it would only make sense, even in these hopelessly divided times, for a COVID-19 commission to be formed in the bipartisan, sober spirit of the 9/11 Commission. Did COVID come from a bat in a wet market in Wuhan? Or did it come from the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab that studies bat coronaviruses through gain of function research? If the origin is question number one, then a close second must be a serious investigation into the response here in the United States, and the draconian shutdowns that did so much damage. Millions died. Our children’s test scores fell to their lowest level in 30 years. Some people lost their businesses and everything they ever worked for. Hard questions and definitive answers are needed on the most consequential global event of our lifetime.
Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
A prominent lawyer representing leading UFO whistleblowers has made a startling revelation: the US government is set to unveil its alien secrets by October 18, 2024. Daniel Sheehan, a vocal advocate for disclosing the Pentagon's encounters with extraterrestrials, disclosed this information on the Freedom Pact podcast. Sheehan, who has been advocating for "disclosure" for several years, claims that a 64-page document signed by a bipartisan group of senators was condensed into a shorter bill containing a crucial deadline for disclosure. He claims the bill, passed into law on December 22, 2023, initiated a 300-day countdown. He [said], "The law has now mandated that all six of our United States military services, all 18 of our United States intelligence agencies, all 32 of our United States defense department agencies are all ordered to gather together every single piece of information they have acquired pertaining to the UFO phenomenon and non-human intelligence that is understood to be responsible for it. They are to gather that all together and have it available in a digitized and retrievable form by October 18 of 2024. The bill is said to include any UFO data over 25 years old that was previously classified. This would encompass some of the most renowned encounters, such as the Roswell Incident, the Phoenix Lights, and perhaps the most persuasive sighting, the lesser-known 1957 RB-47 encounter.
Note: We interviewed Daniel Sheehan to discuss the details of this unprecedented UFO disclosure process. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Since the United States detonated its first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in 1945, dozens of accounts of UFOs have been logged by military witnesses and government scientists working with America's sensitive nuclear arsenal. Now a new, decades-long study has analyzed over 500 of the best supported UFO cases from the heights of the Cold War and hauntingly concluded: 'This intelligence understands atomics, and they understand atomic weaponry.' UFO reports over America's nuclear arsenal appeared to shift from sites where the bombs were made to missile silos and US air bases as the Cold War arms race grew. That's one of the key findings from the new work, a series of three studies led by a retired US Air Force staff sergeant, Larry Hancock, and a data analyst affiliate with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, Ian Porritt. Their qualified, but haunting conclusion: Data from this three decade-long period lends credence to the idea that extraterrestrials, or some other intelligence, has methodically surveilled America's rise to a nuclear power. 'This intelligence understands the developmental cycle. They have some contextual knowledge of what they're looking at and what they're looking for,' Hancock [said]. Among the hundreds of cases included in their analysis was the infamous March 16, 1967 Malmstrom case in which Air Force witnesses reported that ten nuclear missiles were switched off by a UFO, confirmed by a US Strategic Air Command report.
Note: Read more about UFO interference with nuclear missiles. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.
Key members of Congress delivered an astounding rebuke to the Pentagon’s UFO analysis office last week, doubling down on whistleblower allegations of secret U.S government UFO programs. In March, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Department of Defense’s UFO analysis program, released a 63-page report categorically denying the existence of such activities. But congressional legislation formally introduced last week represents a remarkable rebuke of AARO's emphatic denials. Congressional displeasure with AARO should come as no surprise. The office’s landmark report shooting down allegations of unreported UFO programs is riddled with basic factual errors, stunning omissions and a laundry list of historical distortions. Notably, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 would cut off funding for “any activity involving [UFOs] protected under any form of special access or restricted access limitations” that has not been reported to Congress, as required by law. In other words, despite AARO’s sweeping denials of secret, unreported UFO activities, the Senate Intelligence Committee believes that such programs do indeed exist. The legislation released last week also requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct a review of AARO. This formal review by Congress’s in-house investigative agency is a stark demonstration of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s lack of confidence in AARO. Key senators ... believe that the Pentagon’s UFO office is either not being truthful with the American public or is not executing its mission effectively.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
The various species of whales inhabiting Earth’s oceans employ different types of vocalizations to communicate. Sperm whales, the largest of the toothed whales, communicate using bursts of clicking noises — called codas — sounding a bit like Morse code. A new analysis of years of vocalizations by sperm whales in the eastern Caribbean has found that their system of communication is more sophisticated than previously known, exhibiting a complex internal structure replete with a “phonetic alphabet.” The researchers identified similarities to ... human language. “The research shows that the expressivity of sperm whale calls is much larger than previously thought,” said Pratyusha Sharma ... lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. “Why are they exchanging these codas? What information might they be sharing?” asked study co-author Shane Gero, Project CETI’s lead biologist. “I think it’s likely that they use codas to coordinate as a family, organize babysitting, foraging and defense,” Gero said. Variations in the number, rhythm and tempo of the clicks produced different types of codas, the researchers found. The whales, among other things, altered the duration of the codas and sometimes added an extra click at the end, like a suffix in human language. “All of these different codas that we see are actually built by combining a comparatively simple set of smaller pieces,” said study co-author Jacob Andreas.
Note: Explore more stories about amazing marine mammals.
What if computer games could facilitate a tangible, meaningful connection with nature? Now they can thanks to a new botany project that empowers gamers to cultivate plants featured in their favourite video game. The idea was that of Hannah Young and Aleks Atanasovski, two gamers who wanted to fuse their love of nature with their passion for gaming. The result is Seed Saga, a botanical pilot that allows players of Guild Wars – a popular roleplaying game renowned for its spectacular flora – to apply for seed packs so they can grow plants that feature in the game. The pair pitched the idea to the developer behind Guild Wars, Arena Net, which was “really up for it”. So much so, that the firm provided renders from the game for the seed packets and gave the project a push on its social channels. Due to the limited availability of seeds ... gamers must submit an application explaining why they want them. The responses, says Young, have been heartening. Said one applicant: “[Guild Wars] saved my life during a period of deep depression. It would be an honour to grow [crimson sunflowers] in my yard to pay homage to the game and support the surrounding insects that could benefit from these flowers.” The first seed packs went out in April. The idea now is to partner with other players in the industry and scale the concept to cultivate a new generation of botanists. Doing so could boost mental health: research shows that interacting with plants counteracts stress brought on by computers.
Note: Explore more positive stories about using technology for good.
In 2003, Mary Fran Lyons was going through chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. One day after a treatment session, she went to the mall to have lunch. Lyons had lost all her hair, so she was wearing a baseball cap. “You didn't have to look at me very hard to know things were not quite right,” Lyons said. As she was walking along, looking at the stores, a woman approached her. She told her something that Lyons will never forget. “She said, ‘I've been sent to tell you that you're going to be OK,’” Lyons remembered. “I stood there and looked at her and I thought, ‘Well, who sent you? I mean, who are you?’ And I did not say anything. And she said it again: 'You're going to be OK.’” Then the woman simply walked away. Lyons watched her leave, trying to understand what had just happened. But nothing about the woman stood out. "She looked like a completely normal human being,” Lyons recalled. “I never met her before, never heard of her since.” Later, Lyons told a good friend about her unusual encounter. “And she said, ‘Do you believe in angels?’" Lyons recalled. “And I said, ‘I do now.’” More than 20 years later, Lyons continues to hold the experience close. “If that woman were standing in front of me right now, I would say to her, ‘You gave me hope at a time when I really needed to hear it,’” Lyons said. “And I still think of that to this day.”
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories.
Ask Google if cats have been on the moon and it used to spit out a ranked list of websites so you could discover the answer for yourself. Now it comes up with an instant answer generated by artificial intelligence - which may or may not be correct. “Yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care,” said Google’s newly retooled search engine. It added: “For example, Neil Armstrong said, ‘One small step for man’ because it was a cat’s step. Buzz Aldrin also deployed cats on the Apollo 11 mission.” None of this is true. Similar errors — some funny, others harmful falsehoods — have been shared on social media since Google this month unleashed AI overviews, a makeover of its search page that frequently puts the summaries on top of search results. It’s hard to reproduce errors made by AI language models — in part because they’re inherently random. They work by predicting what words would best answer the questions asked of them based on the data they’ve been trained on. They’re prone to making things up — a widely studied problem known as hallucination. Another concern was a deeper one — that ceding information retrieval to chatbots was degrading the serendipity of human search for knowledge, literacy about what we see online, and the value of connecting in online forums with other people who are going through the same thing.Those forums and other websites count on Google sending people to them, but Google’s new AI overviews threaten to disrupt the flow of money-making internet traffic.
Note: Read more about the potential dangers of Google's new AI tool. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.
"Agency intervention is necessary to stop the existential threat Google poses to original content creators," the News/Media Alliance—a major news industry trade group—wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It asked the agencies to use antitrust authority "to stop Google's latest expansion of AI Overviews," a search engine innovation that Google has been rolling out recently. Overviews offer up short, AI-generated summaries paired with brief bits of text from linked websites. Overviews give "comprehensive answers without the user ever having to click to another page," the The New York Times warns. And this worries websites that rely on Google to drive much of their traffic. "It potentially chokes off the original creators of the content," Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing (owner of 68 daily newspapers), told the Times. Media websites have gotten used to Google searches sending them a certain amount of traffic. But that doesn't mean Google is obligated to continue sending them that same amount of traffic forever. It is possible that Google's pivot to AI was hastened by how hostile news media has been to tech companies. We've seen publishers demanding that search engines and social platforms pay them for the privilege of sharing news links, even though this arrangement benefits publications (arguably more than it does tech companies) by driving traffic.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.
Sara needed some chocolate - she had had one of those days - so wandered into a Home Bargains store. "Within less than a minute, I'm approached by a store worker who comes up to me and says, 'You're a thief, you need to leave the store'." Sara ... was wrongly accused after being flagged by a facial-recognition system called Facewatch. She says after her bag was searched she was led out of the shop, and told she was banned from all stores using the technology. Facewatch later wrote to Sara and acknowledged it had made an error. Facewatch is used in numerous stores in the UK. It's not just retailers who are turning to the technology. On the day we were filming, the Metropolitan Police said they made six arrests with the assistance of the tech. 192 arrests have been made so far this year as a result of it. But civil liberty groups are worried that its accuracy is yet to be fully established, and point to cases such as Shaun Thompson's. Mr Thompson, who works for youth-advocacy group Streetfathers, didn't think much of it when he walked by a white van near London Bridge. Within a few seconds, he was approached by police and told he was a wanted man. But it was a case of mistaken identity. "It felt intrusive ... I was treated guilty until proven innocent," he says. Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, has filmed the police on numerous facial-recognition deployments. She says that anyone's face who is scanned is effectively part of a digital police line-up.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on artificial intelligence controversies from reliable major media sources.
The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned. "At the point that I got to prison, I had never went into the liquor store and never pulled a tricker," [said former inmate Dorsey Nunn]. "I never did kill anybody. And I had never thought about killing anybody. We talked about the marriage of, of profit and you talk about the prison industrial complex, which is, essentially the practice of, marrying profit and punishment. One of the ugly realities in California under article one, section six, you still claim as a society to practice slavery, the right to practice slavery on the government level. They call it involuntary servitude. They mentioned it again in the 13th amendment. So people are still laboring without consent. The maximum amount of money that I was paid was 32 cents an hour. The maximum amount of money that I was paid for working a month. It’s $32 a month, so at a certain point and the maximum amount of money that they gave me to start this fresh new life with was $200 gate money, and they’ve been giving that probably since the early seventies, no account for inflation, no account for anything. And they say, start your life over. People are rising up to do away with and challenge the notion of the 13th Amendment and the practice of slavery. Should we actually make a question of maintaining slavery, a question of morals, and do we actually want to actually profit off of slaves?"
Note: Dorsey Nunn wrote a book about his experiences advocating for the rights of former prison inmates titled, "What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection." With about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire. For more, read about America's dystopian "pay-to-stay" incarceration system.
In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday ... Dr. Anthony Fauci told members of Congress that the COVID guidelines he preached in 2020 had no scientific support. These disclosures are damning and maddening for all of us who had structured our lives around these rules for years. As a result, millions of people suffered needlessly. He also admitted in the January interview that there was little science that backed requiring children to wear masks. The real effect of social distancing which Fauci basically admitted Monday and in January's testimony was just an educated guess on how to deter COVID-19 devastated America's economy, small businesses and families. For what? Closing schools was devastating to kids. Pandemic closings resulted in two decades of learning loss. Anxiety and depression skyrocketed, especially among adolescents and teens. The real effect of social distancing ... devastated America's economy, small businesses and families. In the second quarter of 2020, 1.2 million jobs were destroyed. In June 2021, 6.2 million people did not work at all or worked fewer hours because their employers closed or lost business. Family-owned businesses were lost, savings wiped, all for rules that had no real scientific basis. On Monday, Fauci did concede that some COVID-19 preventative measures may have gone too far and led to harmful outcomes.
Note: Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said “I don’t recall” over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?
Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting covid-19 — or get rid of it. “I very much hope that CDC will revisit this decision or at least tell us that there is more and stronger data to support this rule than what I have been able to find online,” McCance-Katz wrote in a June 2020 memo submitted to the CDC and other health agency leaders. The CDC would keep its six-foot social distance recommendation in place until August 2022. There was little science behind the six-foot rule. “It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.” Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, also privately testified to Congress in January that he was not aware of evidence behind the social distancing recommendation. The U.S. distancing measure was particularly stringent, as other countries adopted shorter distances; the World Health Organization set a distance of one meter, or slightly more than three feet, which experts concluded was roughly as effective as the six-foot mark at deterring infections, and would have allowed schools to reopen more rapidly.
Note: Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said “I don’t recall” over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?
New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists. Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists. Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions. Payments skyrocketed during the pandemic era: Those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined. All told, it’s $1.036 billion. NIH is still redacting pieces of the data that would help us more easily connect therapeutics with their government-paid inventors. For example, they refuse to show us the amount of royalties paid to each individual scientist. So we still can’t entirely follow the money. In the meantime, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has sponsored the Royalty Transparency Act, which sailed unanimously through the committee process and deserves a floor vote immediately.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the pharmaceutical industry from reliable major media sources.
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