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British Prime Minister David Cameron said tackling child sexual abuse was a national priority on a par with organised crime on Tuesday, announcing measures to prevent systematic abuse. Britain has been rocked by a series of child sex abuse revelations, including a case in Rotherham, northern England, where some 1,400 children, some as young as 11, were abused by gangs of men. "I've just spent half an hour with some of the survivors of abuse in Rotherham and these are stories that are going to stay with me forever. They are absolutely horrific," Cameron said at a meeting of victim groups, police and child protection experts held in his official London residence. "Young girls [are] being abused over and over again on an industrial scale." Classifying child sexual abuse as a national threat will create a duty for police forces to collaborate across regions to safeguard children, Cameron's office said. Cameron also announced other measures to improve coordination between public bodies and a helpline to encourage whistleblowers. In addition, Cameron proposed criminal sanctions for senior public workers who fail to protect children from abuse. Referring to the Rotherham case he said: "This has happened with too many organisations and too many people walking on by and we have got to really resolve that this stops here, it doesn't happen again and we recognise abuse for what it is."
Note: If you think this is only a problem in the UK, watch a revealing five-minute video presenting solid evidence that Child Protective Services is involved in organized U.S. child sex trafficking rings. See this webpage for more information. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
Taser International, the stun-gun maker emerging as a leading supplier of body cameras for police, has cultivated financial ties to police chiefs whose departments have bought the recording devices. Taser is covering airfare and hotel stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences. It is also hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants, sometimes just months after their cities signed contracts with Taser. The relationships raise questions of whether chiefs are acting in the best interests of the taxpayers in their dealings with Scottsdale, Arizona-based Taser, whose contracts for cameras and storage systems for the video can run into the millions of dollars. As the police chief in Fort Worth, Texas, successfully pushed for the signing of a major contract with Taser before a company quarterly sales deadline, he wrote a Taser representative in an email, "Someone should give me a raise." City officials and rival companies are raising concerns about police chiefs' ties to Taser. Charlie Luke, a Salt Lake City councilman ... said he was surprised when he learned last year that the city's police department had purchased Taser cameras using surplus money, bypassing the standard bidding process and City Council approval. The department declined to say how much it has spent acquiring 295 body cameras. Taser's competitors ... complain they have been shut out by cities awarding no-bid contracts to Taser and are being put at a disadvantage by requests for proposals that appear tailored to Taser's products.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The City-County Council on Monday voted largely along party lines to create a "Homeless Bill of Rights," making Indianapolis one of the first cities in the country to do so. The ordinance, modelled after similar laws in Rhode Island and Illinois, establishes specific protections for the homeless, a vulnerable population that advocates say face pervasive discrimination in their daily lives. Among the protections: the right to "move freely in public spaces," such as sidewalks and public buildings; the right to equal treatment by city agencies; the right to emergency medical care; and the right to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for their personal property, just as someone would have inside a home. Notably, it ... requires the city to give a homeless person 15 days notice before displacing him or her from a camp. The city also would have to store displaced people's belongings for 60 days and connect them with nonprofits that would provide them with transitional housing and "wrap-around services," such as medical care and employment assistance. [City Councilman LeRoy] Robinson said such services are vital and less costly than arresting people for minor offenses to get them off the streets. "It is much more cost-effective to provide support services and assistance to those experiencing homelessness in our city, than to arrest them," Robinson wrote in an email to The Star.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
I used to go door-to-door on my own with a big, strong, well liked man in my congregation, named Jonathan. I was just 9 and 10 when he repeatedly sexually abused me. It is really hard for kids to speak up when theyre abused. But the Jehovahs Witnesses make it a lot harder. They have a 2 Witness rule, which says that anyone who accuses an adult of abuse must have a second witness. If there is no second witness, the accuser is punished for a false accusation - usually by ordering that no Witness may talk with or associate with the false accuser. This is called dis-fellowshipping. For a kid raised only with other Witnesses, it was horrifying. Even your parents would have to ignore you. It was more terrifying than Jonathan. It was the elders of my congregation who had assigned Jonathan to team up with me. Like everyone else in the congregation, my parents liked Brother Jonathan and trusted him in our family. What my parents didnt know, was that Jonathan had sexually molested another girl in our congregation. The elders knew this and had kept it a secret. They were following orders from Watchtower leaders, based in the world headquarters in New York, who in 1989 had issued a top-secret instruction to keep known child sex abusers in the congregations a secret. This instruction became Exhibit 1 at my civil trial. A recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that they have continued to issues directives urging silence around child abuse. Last November, elders were instructed to avoid taking criminal matters like child abuse to the authorities. Instead, they were told to handle them internally in confidential committees.
Note: The above Guardian article was written by Candace Conti, the first child sexual abuse victim to win a jury trial against Watchtower. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti, now director of the California Institute of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, discovered something potentially revolutionary: childhood abuse and neglect could affect adult health. In the 1990s, Felitti got together with an epidemiologist named Dr. Rob Anda, who at the time was on staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They came up with a set of questions to trace, in a larger group, how tough childhood experiences might affect adult health, [and] called their work the study of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACE. [Upon] getting a rough measure of the severity of the patients' experiences, when Anda's team at the CDC crunched the numbers, he was shocked. One in 10 of the patients surveyed had grown up with domestic violence. Two in 10 had been sexually abused. Three in 10 had been physically abused. Now, 15 years after the ACE study came out, some scientists are trying to connect the dots to get a clearer picture of what exactly adverse childhood experiences do to the body and why the study results came out the way they did. "Well, you've reshaped the biology of the child," says Megan Gunnar, a developmental psychologist at the University of Minnesota who, for more than 30 years, has been studying the ways children respond to stressful experiences. "This is how nature protects us," Gunnar adds. We all become adapted to living in "the kinds of environments we're born into." And if you have scary, traumatic experiences when you're small, Gunnar says, your stress response system may, in some cases, be programmed to overreact, influencing the way your mind and body work together.
Note: An NPR poll whose results were released alongside this report suggests that people are largely aware that childhood trauma impacts adult health. If healthcare providers are ignoring the scale of this issue, something is very wrong with industrial medicine.
This spring, President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress want to use an outdated process used to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement more than 20 years ago a rule called fast track to force ... passage of the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal. A fast-tracked TPP would lock in a rigged set of economic rules, lasting potentially forever, before most Americans let alone some members of Congress have had a chance to understand it thoroughly. It would be a grave mistake for Congress to authorize fast-tracking this giant trade deal. We now know that NAFTA [has] contributed to the huge U.S. trade deficits. We now import about $500 billion more in goods and services each year than we export. Following NAFTA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership is like turning a bad television show into a terrible movie. As for the problems with the TPP? What's been leaked about its proposals reveals, for example, that the pharmaceutical industry would get stronger patent protections, delaying cheaper generic versions of drugs. The deal also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation's legal system, that can order compensation for lost expected profits resulting from a nation's regulations, including our own. These extraordinary rights for corporations put governments on the defensive over legitimate public health or environmental rules.
Note: The above article was co-authored by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and current president of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka. For more, see this article, or watch the two minute video Robert Reich made to educate the public about the dangers of the TPP.
More than 300 young people have been groomed and sexually exploited by gangs of men in Oxfordshire in the past 15 years, a damning report into the failures of police and social services to stop years of sexual torture, trafficking and rape will reveal, the Guardian has learned. The victims, mostly girls, come predominantly from the city of Oxford. A serious case review by the Oxfordshire safeguarding childrens board, to be published on Tuesday, will condemn Thames Valley police for not believing the young girls, for treating them as if they had chosen to adopt the lifestyle, and for failing to act on repeated calls for help. Oxfordshire social services which had responsibility for the girls safety will be equally damned for knowing they were being groomed and for failing to protect them despite compelling evidence they were in danger. One social worker told a trial that nine out of 10 of those responsible for the girls [were] aware of what was going on. The case echoes the child exploitation scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale and Derby. In Oxford, however, the grooming, sexual torture and trafficking took place on the streets of the Cowley area of the city, in churchyards, parks, a guesthouse and empty flats procured for the purpose of drugging the girls and handing them around to be gang raped and brutalised. Police officers and social workers did not listen to the girls when they spoke of the abuse they were suffering, did not believe them and dismissed them.
Note: If you think this is only a problem in the UK, read this disturbing article about the likely murder of Bill Bowen, a man who was about to complete a documentary exposing blatant, horrible abuses by the US's Child Protective Services that were covered up at high levels. Watch a revealing five-minute video presenting solid evidence that Child Protective Services is involved in organized U.S. child sex trafficking rings. See this webpage for more information. For solid evidence of a pedophile ring reaching to the highest levels of government, don't miss this powerful documentary and these sexual abuse new summaries.
A group of top American intellectuals have volunteered to "take" the 1,000 lash sentence imposed by the Saudi government on a prominent liberal blogger. Raif Badawi ... received the sentence for insulting his country's hardline Islamic clerics. The move, which follows widespread international outrage at the sentence, is being led by Robert P. George, a leading professor at Princeton University. Professor George said: "Together with six colleagues on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, I sent a letter to the Saudi Ambassador to the US calling on the Saudi government to stop the horrific torture of Raif Badawi an advocate of religious freedom and freedom of expression in the Saudi Kingdom. If the Saudi government refuses, we each asked to take 100 of Mr. Badawi's lashes so that we could suffer with him. The seven of us include Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Christians, Jews, and a Muslim." Mr Badawi, 31, who set up a liberal website to discuss Saudi politics in which he criticised the countrys hardline religious establishment, has been sentenced to ten years in prison as well as 1,000 lashes. So harsh is the flogging that it has to be administered in individual sessions of 50 lashes a time in order to stop the recipient dying or suffering serious injury during the process. The first bout of 50 lashes was dished out to Mr Badawi on January 9, before hundreds of spectators in a public square in front of a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The date for a second set of lashes has so far been postponed as doctors have said that Mr Badawi's injuries from the first flogging have not yet healed.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the ... latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS. It appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant. One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBIs plot: his mom had taken away his passport. In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade. These cases ... end up sending young people to prison for decades for crimes which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI trickery. Were constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of [terrorism]. But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by trolling the Internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they target? Shouldnt there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without the help of the FBI? The Justice Department is aggressively pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the grave threat. The FBIs terrorism strategy keep fear alive drives everything they do.
Note: Human Rights Watch has documented the government manufacture of fake "terrorism" plots being used to keep fear alive in war on terror. There is even evidence that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an F.B.I. entrapment plan gone awry. In 2012, the New York Times exposed the pattern of F.B.I. entrapment used to produce these fake "terrorism" plots. How can corrupt intelligence agencies continue to blatantly manipulate public perception like this?
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, will apologise to dozens of hospital patients who were abused by Jimmy Savile amid new allegations about the "horrific" scale of abuse. An official report, published by barrister Kate Lampard on Thursday, will disclose allegations that Savile assaulted and raped at least 44 victims at Stoke Mandeville hospital. The victims, some of whom were as young as eight, say that their complaints about Savile's behaviour were ignored by the authorities. A former children's doctor has also been convicted of sexually assaulting young girls at the hospital in the 1970s and 1980s, raising fears that there may have been a paedophile ring operating at the hospital. The report will also examine allegations about Savile's activity at a further 43 hospitals across the country. One woman told the inquiry that she was abused when she was eight-years-old and recovering from cancer surgery. At the time she had 144 stitches across the lower part of her body as a result of an operation. She says that when she raised her complaint with a ward sister, she was met with the response: "Be quiet, you silly girl. Do you realise how much he has done for the hospital." Savile, the former Radio 1 DJ and television personality, began volunteering as a porter at Stoke Mandeville in the 1970s and had free use of a flat on site while he helped to raise 40 million for its spinal injuries centre. Many people say times have changed but it is still not illegal to cover-up claims of abuse to protect an organisations profitability and reputation.
Note: For lots more revealing how deep this sex abuse scandal runs, read another Telegraph article on how hospital staff covered up the abuse, and a BBC report on how Jimmy Savile's brother used his family name to sexually abuse psychiatric patients at a London hospital where abuse was also systematically covered up. For solid evidence of a pedophile ring reaching to the highest levels of government, don't miss this powerful documentary. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
If words like UFO, extraterrestrial, crops circles and abductee have ever piqued your paranormal interest, do yourself a favor and head to the International UFO Congress. Thousands flock to the annual event, which is produced by Open Minds, a paranormal research organization. Each attendee has his or her own reason for being there. My goal was to find out if modern science and technology have changed the game when it comes to UFO sightings and evidence gathering. A lot of people think, go to a UFO convention, its going to be tinfoil hats, but thats not what this is. We have NASA astrobiologists speak, scientists, high-ranking military officials, the works. I mean, theres a lot of really credible people covering this subject, said UFO Congress co-organizer and paranormal journalist Maureen Elsberry. The highlight of this year's conference was undeniably the speaker series, and it was standing room only to see one man, Bob Lazar. Lazar first spoke out in 1989, claiming that hed worked as a government scientist at a secret mountainside facility south of Area 51s main site, where he saw remarkably advanced UFO technology. Many of the attendees told me that hard evidence is a requirement for ufologists and paranormal field experts. Derrel Sims, also known as Alien Hunter, told me he spent two years in the CIA, and also has served as a police officer and licensed private investigator. In 38-plus years of alien research, Sims has learned this: If you look, the evidence is there.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing UFO news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement. Who will benefit from the TPP? One strong hint is [a provision] called Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldnt be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions and even billions of dollars in damages. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldnt employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgement the next. If the tilt toward giant corporations wasnt clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court: only international investors, which are, by and large, big corporations. So if a Vietnamese company with U.S. operations wanted to challenge an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, it could use ISDS. But if an American labor union believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the union would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts.
Note: The above article was written by courageous US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and further clarifies why the TPP is a pending disaster.
U.S. authorities are investigating major banks over potential manipulation of the precious metals market, the latest development in a series of probes related to major financial benchmarks. HSBC is among at least 10 major banks being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible rigging of the price-setting process for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday. The report said other banks being scrutinized include: Goldman Sachs; JPMorgan Chase; Britain-based Barclays; Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse; Bank of Nova Scotia; Germany-based Deutsche Bank; France-based Socit Gnrale; and South Africa-based Standard Bank Group. U.S. authorities declined to comment. Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Barclays, HSBC, UBS and Bank of Nova Scotia have been named as defendants in various putative class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal courts over suspected manipulation of precious metals pricing. The complaints contend that bank traders conspired to manipulate the price of metal derivatives in a bid to reap profits on proprietary trades. The new U.S. investigations follow separate bank probes launched earlier over suspected manipulation of the $5.3-billion-a-day foreign exchange currency trading market, along with rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is used to set rates on billions of dollars in loans, credit cards and mortgages.
Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry.
When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty. During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85 percent on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000 when filing jointly - a tax increase of $2.1 billion. He's also agreed to raise Minnesota's minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women. Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota's economy - that's 165,800 more jobs in Dayton's first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms combined. Even though Minnesota's top income tax rate is the fourth highest in the country, it has the fifth lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. As of January 2015, Minnesota has a $1 billion budget surplus, and Gov. Dayton has pledged to reinvest more than one third of that money into public schools. The reason Gov. Dayton was able to radically transform Minnesota's economy into one of the best in the nation is simple arithmetic. Raising taxes on those who can afford to pay more will turn a deficit into a surplus. Raising the minimum wage will increase the median income. And in a state where education is a budget priority and economic growth is one of the highest in the nation, it only makes sense that more businesses would stay.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicagos west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Police practices at Homan Square [allegedly] include: Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases; Beating by police, resulting in head wounds; Shackling for prolonged periods; Denying attorneys access to the secure facility; Holding people [as young as 15] without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours. Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On May 16 2012, he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest against the Nato summit. After serving two and a half years in prison, Church ... and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses. Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantnamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations. The real danger in allowing practices like Guantnamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they ... creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. Thats how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.
Note: Church was one of three young activists charged with 'terrorism' after police manufactured evidence against peaceful Occupy Wall St protesters in Chicago in 2012. For more, read about the increasing militarization of police in the U.S. after 9/11, or see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles.
A large study that looked at data from nearly every general medical practice in England suggests that water fluoridation may increase the risk of developing hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid. This condition, in which the thyroid gland doesnt produce enough hormones, is associated with symptoms such as fatigue, obesity and depression. The study found that locations with fluoridated water supplies were more than 30 percent more likely to have high levels of hypothyroidism, compared to areas with low levels of the chemical in the water. Overall, there were 9 percent more cases of underactive thyroid in fluoridated places. Fluoride is added to the water of about 10 percent of Englands populationand to the taps of about two-thirds of Americansfor the purpose of preventing cavities. Fluoride was used to treat hyperthyroidism (or an overactive thyroid) in the 1950s. It may put a damper on the glands activities by suppressing the activity of various enzymes, causing physical damage or interfering with the absorption and use of iodine, a substance that is critical for thyroid health. In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency convened a panel that recommended lowering the maximum allowable level of fluoride in water. Nine years later, the EPA is still considering whether or not to revise its fluoride standards.
Note: Read lots more excellent information on fluoridation of water in this article on mercola.com. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Last year Public Health England released a report saying fluoride was a safe and effective way of improving dental health. But new research from the University of Kent suggests that there is a spike in the number of cases of underactive thyroid in high fluoride areas such as the West Midlands and the North East of England. In England, around 10 per cent of the population (6 million) live in areas with a naturally or artificially fluoridated water supply of 1 mg fluoride per litre of drinking water. The researchers compared areas to records from 7935 general practices covering around 95 per cent of the English population in 2012-2013. Rates of high underactive thyroid were at least 30 per cent more likely in practices located in areas with fluoride levels in excess of 0.3 mg/l. Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in water in varying amounts, depending on the region and it is also found in certain foods and drinks, including tea and fish. It helps combat tooth decay by making enamel more resistant to bacteria. But previous studies have found that it inhibits the production of iodine, which is essential for a healthy thyroid. The thyroid gland, which is found in the neck, regulates the metabolism as well as many other systems in the body. An underactive thyroid can lead to depression, weight gain, fatigue and aching muscles and affects 15 times more women than men, around 15 in 1,000 women.
Note: Read lots more excellent information on fluoridation of water in this article on mercola.com. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
This is how the story goes: Its 1966, and 6-year-old Thomas Reed is in his bedroom on his familys horse farm in the Berkshires when the encounters begin. Suddenly, hes in the woods near his home looking at a UFO. The following year, there is another incident. Two years later, the family is driving on Route 7 when they see strange lights in the sky. Thomas and his brother and mother and grandmother find themselves in a giant room. Next thing, hes back near the car. Reed has told these stories many times, and it has not always gone well. But recently, his tale had found recognition in an unlikely place. The Great Barrington Historical Society & Museum has formally inducted the UFO story. "We believe it is true, said Debbie Oppermann, the director of the society. I know were going to get a lot of backlash. But ... based on the evidence weve been given, we believe this is a significant and true event. The historical society believes it is the first time a mainstream historical society or museum in the United States has declared a UFO encounter to be historical fact. What most interests the historical society is the 1969 encounter, because dozens of people in the area reported seeing an unidentified flying object around that time. Many of those eyewitnesses called the local radio station, WSBS, which covered the sightings. The radio station has provided documentation to the historical society, which interviewed one of those eyewitnesses.
Note: The Great Barrington Historical Society joins a former presidential aide, a respected astronaut, countless others in legitimizing historic accounts of UFO activity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles about The UFO cover-up and disclosure effort from reliable major media sources.
Syngenta, a Swiss chemicals company, produces one of Americas most popular herbicides. It is called atrazine, and 73.7 million pounds of the chemical compound were applied in the United States in 2013. It was used on more than half of all corn crops, two-thirds of sorghum and up to 90 percent of sugar cane. The weed killer is banned as a pesticide in the European Union as well as in Switzerland over concerns that it is a groundwater contaminant. Syngenta, however, did not get the memo. Even though the European Union banned atrazine over a decade ago, the company has long insisted that the pesticide was not banned. Sensitivity over regulatory gaps between the United States and Europe has flared during trans-Atlantic trade talks, which have been underway since 2013. An increasing number of critics of the process are concerned that the outcome could favor corporations more than consumers. Advocacy groups have particularly focused on chemicals, given the disparities in policy. Baskut O. Tuncak, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law, said that in his view the chemical proposals that have surfaced so far reflect a lot of industrys demands and their concerns with more protective E.U. policies. He added that proposed changes could slow or stop and possibly weaken efforts to develop stronger chemical regulation in either the E.U. or the U.S.
Note: Syngenta did everything in its power to discredit atrazine researcher Tyrone Hayes after Hayes published science proving that Syngenta's products were poisonous. The New Yorker published a detailed article on Syngenta's smear campaign. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Three mothers - all of them educated, middle-class professionals - are among the vaccine skeptics who have been widely ridiculed since more than 100 people fell ill in a measles outbreak traced to Disneyland. Critics question their intelligence, their parenting, even their sanity. Some have been called criminals for foregoing shots for their children. "Contrary to the common sentiment, we are not anti-science," said Michelle Moore, a businesswoman. The backlash ... has been so severe that dozens of anti-vaccine parents contacted by The Associated Press were afraid to speak out. But a handful of mothers agreed to discuss their thinking. Anti-vaccination parents include a mix of views. Many are Americans with college degrees. Most hesitant parents do not avoid all vaccinations. They typically under-vaccinate, either delaying the shots until their child is older or refusing certain vaccines while continuing with others. The parents who spoke to AP recounted spending hundreds of hours reviewing medical studies, books and news stories. They cited cases of children who were supposedly hurt by vaccines and the existence of a government-run vaccine injury-compensation program. And they worried about the oversight of pharmaceutical companies that reap profits from vaccines and are shielded from liability when a vaccine causes harm. Moore and others also ... say large doses of synthetic additives found in vaccines, including aluminum and mercury, can harm the immune and digestive systems and brain.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.
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