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U.S. special operations forces in Iraq developed an untraceable explosive device they nicknamed the Xbox to kill Iraqi Shiite militiamen smuggling roadside bombs from Iran to attack American troops, according to a new book. Starting in about 2007, Army Delta Force commandos in a special task force in the war to oust Saddam Hussein used the bombs against Iranian collaborators whose improvised explosive devices were powerful enough to destroy the most heavily armored U.S. vehicles, Sean Naylor wrote in Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command. The Xbox bomb was designed to look and behave exactly like one made by Iraqi insurgents with a hodgepodge of Russian, Chinese and Pakistani-made parts, wrote Naylor, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy. The intent was that if the device were sent to the FBI for analysis, even its experts would mistakenly trace the bomb back to a particular terrorist bomb maker. Using the bomb ... the command found a way around the political restrictions by killing its enemies without leaving any U.S. fingerprints, according to the book.
Note: The "war on terror" is designed to be endless. The above shows how blurry the line between terrorism and military deception has become.
Green rooftops will soon be sprouting up across France, thanks to a new law passed in March. New buildings in the countrys commercial zones - think shops, offices, and restaurants - must now have either solar panels or green roofs, meaning a growing medium such as soil and a covering of vegetation. The new rooftop vegetation will provide habitat for birds, absorb airborne pollutants, [retain] rainwater, and reduce the urban heat island effect whereby high concentrations of concrete buildings and asphalt increase air temperature. Green roofs could even improve worker productivity, with a recent study by the University of Melbourne finding that participants who took a 40-second break to look at a green roof were more focused and accurate when they got back to work compared to those who viewed a concrete roof. Similar green-roof bylaws exist in various cities around the world, including Tokyo, Toronto, Copenhagen, and Zurich. In Toronto ... all commercial and large residential buildings built since 2009 have been required to have at least 20 percent green-roof coverage. In Copenhagen and Zurich all new flat roofs, both private and public, must be vegetated. And since 2001, all new buildings in Tokyo larger than about 11,000 square feet are required to have at least 20 percent usable green-roof space. However, France is the first to introduce such legislation country-wide. The new law means that Frances urban and industrial skylines might look more like New York Citys booming rooftop farms and less like a concrete jungle.
Note: Don't miss the inspiring photos of innovative green roofs at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The Subway sandwich chain is working vigorously to emphasize that it has cut its ties to its longtime ad pitchman, Jared Fogle, whose plea deal for having sex with underage girls and possession of child pornography was announced on Wednesday. Yet the case, just as it did in July when federal agents raided Fogle's home, put Subway back in a spotlight. Fogle, of Zionsville, Ind., appeared in court in Indianapolis Wednesday on charges of having had sex with minors and distributing and receiving child pornography. Under the deal, Fogle agrees to to a prison sentence of not less than five years. When media reports about impending deal surfaced Tuesday night, Subway sent out a tweet: "We have already ended our relationship with Jared and have no further comment." One crisis management public relations expert, Jonathan Bernstein, credits Subway for yanking their sponsorship of Fogle in July when search warrants were served by federal agents. But, he adds the sandwich chain would have been wiser to have parted ways when trouble first started surfacing last spring, when the head of Fogle's charitable arm, the Jared Foundation, was arrested in the case. "They probably didn't do it soon enough," says Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management. Before parting company with Subway, Fogle served as the face of the chain for many years to give it a healthy fast-food orientation.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Peer review is supposed to be the pride of the rigorous academic publishing process. But increasingly journals are finding out that those supposedly authoritative checks are being rigged. In the latest episode of the fake peer review phenomenon, one of the worlds largest academic publishers, Springer, has retracted 64 articles from 10 of its journals after discovering that their reviews were linked to fake e-mail addresses. The announcement comes nine months after 43 studies were retracted by BioMed Central (one of Springers imprints) for the same reason. Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky ... said he didnt know of any instances of retractions for faked peer reviews before 2012. In a report for the journal Nature last fall, Oransky and his colleagues told the story of a ... researcher who wrote peer reviews for 28 of his own papers. Investigations ... have also uncovered a number of services selling names and contact information for made-up experts guaranteed to give an expedited, positive review. In a statement on its Web site in February, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) detailed these agencies systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the process. COPEs chair Ginny Barbour wrote in December, The uncovering of companies systematically manipulating publications, by the use of fake reviewers and more, offers an alarming glimpse into what can happen if reward systems are implemented with no thought or oversight.
Note: The editor of a top medical journal recently suggested that half all of scientific literature may simply be untrue. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in science.
On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell ... got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase. Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but ... mentioned nothing about a physical encounter, [and] told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana. An autopsy report ... concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system. The manner of death: Homicide. No officers have been disciplined in connection with the death. Inmate witnesses at Fishkill say they are the ones who have been punished. Several described being put into solitary confinement and threatened with violence after speaking with Mr. Harrells family, their lawyers and with news reporters. The Times documented similar allegations of abuse from inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., where in June two convicted murderers escaped, resulting in a three-week manhunt. There, inmates described being beaten and choked with plastic bags by corrections officers seeking information about the escapees.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Nearly 300 documents, released by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Metro-North Railroad, reveal more on-the-ground surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists than previous reports have shown. Conducted by a coalition of MTA counterterrorism agents and undercover police in conjunction with NYPD intelligence officers, the protest surveillance ... raises questions over whether New York-area law enforcement agencies are potentially criminalizing the exercise of free speech. In [one] document, sent February 13 concerning a demonstration at Grand Central, Anthony DAngelis, identified in the document as an MTA liaison with the NYPDs counterterrorism division, shared and labeled a photo of Alex Seel, a local photographer. Several protesters at Grand Central say they are perturbed by the photo files existence, considering that Seel did not share his name publicly that night and usually only comes to the protests as a quiet photographer. Another document from a December 7 protest [includes] a photo of prominent activist and former Philadelphia police officer Ray Lewis, [and mentions] Lewis past activities with Occupy Wall Street. Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College [sociology professor] argues this is part of a long history of police surveillance of activists, [noting that], "in the post-9-11 environment, theres been a ... massive expansion of intelligence gathering. Protest activity often gets lumped in with terrorism investigation.
Note: For more along these lines, read about Cointelpro, the program used by corrupt intelligence agencies to spy on and attack the U.S. civil rights movement beginning in the 1960's. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the erosion of civil liberties.
If you were freaked out by the news in June that an anesthesiologist had talked trash about her patient while he was unconscious on the table in front of her, you'd better brace yourself. There's more and it's ... much worse. In an anonymous essay published in the Annals of Internal Medicine this week, one physician describes in graphic detail what happened to two women when they were asleep in operating rooms. The stories are horrifying. "I bet she's enjoying this," one doctor reportedly said while prepping a woman for a vaginal hysterectomy. In another case, an obstetrician performed an obscene dance after saving the life of a woman who was bleeding out after having a baby. In a letter accompanying the essay, the editorial team agonized over whether to publish the piece. Everyone agreed that [it] was "disgusting and scandalous" and could damage the profession's reputation. But some argued that this was why they shouldn't publish it while others felt that was why they should publish it. In the end they said they decided to do so in order to "expose medicine's dark underbelly." They said the first incident "reeked of misogyny and disrespect the second reeked of all that plus heavy overtones of sexual assault and racism." The journal's editors ... hope that medical educators and others will use the essay as a "jumping-off point for discussions that explore the reasons why physicians sometimes behave badly. If the essay squelches such behavior even once, then it was well worth publishing," they wrote.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing medical industry news articles from reliable major media sources.
When Paola Gonzalez received a phone call from RIP Medical Debt, she was certain what she heard was a mistake. A prank, maybe. The caller said a $950 hospital bill had been paid for in full. She wouldnt have to worry about it again. They wanted to pay a bill for me, she said. I was just speechless. The 24-year-old student ... has lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. I cant always work, Gonzalez said. Ill be fine today and sick tomorrow. Its really amazing that people would help out like this. Gonzalez is one of many people who have had a debt paid by RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit founded by two former debt collectors, Jerry Ashton and Craig Antico, that buys debt on the open market and then abolishes it, no strings attached. In [its first] year, the group has abolished just under $400,000. On July 4, it launched a year-long campaign to ... abolish $17.6 million of other peoples debt. It works like this: typical collection agencies will buy debts from private practices, hospitals, and other collection agencies. The buyers often [purchase] a debt for pennies on the dollar while charging the debtor the full amount, plus additional fees. Antico and Ashton are plugged into the same marketplace. They buy the debt for around one percent of the amount it's worth. Then, they forgive it. Ashton worked in the debt collections business for more than 30 years. The industry treated debts as commodities and sold them for a profit while the debtor struggled to pay off the full amount. That I find to be unconscionable, says Ashton.
Note: Ashton was inspired to rethink debt by Rolling Jubilee, a program that came out of the Occupy Wall Street movement which similarly abolishes student loan debt.
Leonard Campanello ... posts frequent Gloucester Police Chief Updates to the police departments Facebook page. Since January of this year, we have responded to dozens of opiate-related overdoses and, unfortunately, the City has seen 4 deaths in this time that are heroin related, he wrote [on March 6], adding: 4 deaths is 4 too many. He continued: If you are a user of opiates or heroin, let us help you. We know you do not want this addiction. We have resources here in the City that can and will make a difference in your life. Do not become a statistic. The post collected 1,226 likes and more page views than there were people in the city. The community, he said, was hungry for different ideas. The war on drugs is over, Campanello said in an interview. And we lost. There is no way we can arrest our way out of this. Weve been trying that for 50 years. The only thing that has happened is heroin has become cheaper and more people are dying. He now wanted to turn Gloucesters police station into an oasis of amnesty in the drug addicts perilous world. No heroin addict who entered the police seeking help unless they had outstanding warrants would face charges or arrest. Even if they toted their drugs and paraphernalia. Instead, they would get help. In another Facebook post in early May, he laid it out. Things then happened fast. The force opened a non-profit called the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative. So far, Campanello said, 109 addicts have sought help at the police station.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The National Security Agencys ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. The N.S.A.s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, [and] the company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AT&T ... began turning over emails and phone calls within days after the warrantless surveillance began in October 2001. In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, according to an internal agency newsletter. In a 2006 lawsuit, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein claimed that ... he had seen a secret room in a company building in San Francisco where the N.S.A. had installed equipment. Mr. Klein claimed that AT&T was providing the N.S.A. with access to Internet traffic that AT&T transmits for other telecom companies. Such cooperative arrangements, known in the industry as peering, mean that communications from customers of other companies could end up on AT&Ts network.
Note: The story of Klein's lawsuit was initially suppressed by the NSA and major media including the L.A. Times. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about questionable intelligence agency practices and the erosion of privacy.
From The Day the Earth Stood Still to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to E.T., pop culture is filled with stories about friendly, curious extraterrestrials visiting Earth to learn more about mankind. For Apollo 14 veteran Edgar Mitchell that plotline is less fiction than it is reality. The sixth man to walk the surface of the moon told Mirror online that he believes peace-keeping aliens visited our planet to prevent a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Mitchell claims that military insiders viewed strange flying crafts cruising over U.S. missile bases and the White Sands facility in New Mexico, the site of the first-ever nuclear bomb detonation in 1945. They wanted to know about our military capabilities, he said. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth. Mitchell, who grew up near the famous Roswell site in New Mexico, said that he has heard from various Air Force officers who claim UFOs were a regular site during the Cold War. They told me UFOs were frequently seen overhead and often disabled their missiles, he added. Other officers from bases on the Pacific coast told me their (test) missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft.
Note: For more, read Edgar Mitchell's testimony on a major cover-up of UFOs. The explore a powerful summary of evidence of UFOs presented by highly respected military and government officials. You can find many other excellent, reliable resources in our UFO Information Center.
18-year-old Michael Brown ... was fatally shot by officer Darren Wilson. The final few minutes of Browns life had been captured by a small surveillance camera rolling inside a nearby grocery shop. As protesters have taken to the streets to demonstrate over Browns death, even a year on, so a legion of amateur cameramen and women have begun watching officers closely, posting recordings that undermine the monopoly once held by police on the official version of events. The surge in vigilante recording is being met with aggressive resistance from police. Judges uphold the right of American people to film law enforcement officers under the first amendment of the US constitution. But officers increasingly complain that filming interferes with their duties. An increasing number are taking direct action to prevent recordings snatching or smashing phones or demanding the handover of footage, sometimes even after it has been livestreamed directly online. For many who capture horrific acts of violence, returning to a normal life becomes impossible. They complain of harassment by police, of threats against their life and of recurring trauma as a result of the death and brutality they have witnessed. Carlos Miller [is] a former journalist who now tracks the issue on his website Photography Is Not A Crime. Already this year, the site has reported on 87 cases in which people were arrested, manhandled or threatened for filming police. The rate of such incidents has increased in recent years, Miller says.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.
The abuse was meticulously catalogued. From 1950 to 2014, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society amassed 5,000 files detailing sexual abuse of Australian children by 1,006 of its members, who believe that only they - the Jehovahs Witnesses - proclaim the truth about God. Young girls were assaulted by neighbors. Teenagers were raped by their fathers. Victims were forced to pray with their abusers. When the children reached out for help, the churchs obsession with secrecy and hostility to outsiders kicked in. Victims, ordered to keep quiet, were forced to confront their abusers in person. All complaints were carefully recorded. No one was reported to the authorities. Child abuse was recorded and hidden away. Now, sordid details from the closed world of the Jehovahs Witnesses are being exposed. Two years ago, the Australian government established a royal commission - similar to a presidential commission in the United States - to investigate institutionalized child sexual abuse. The inquirys primary target was the Catholic Church, whose record of protecting pedophiles was almost as rampant in Australia as in the United States. To avoid singling out one religion, government officials gave the inquiry wide legal powers to examine any organization that may have covered up abuse. Of the religious and nonreligious groups being investigated, the Jehovahs Witnesses are exceptional, experts say. The church ... has emerged as the least able or willing to deal with sexual abuse within its ranks.
Note: Read more about Jehovah's Witnesses' institutionalized silencing of abuse victims. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned. Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid [Vincent Bias] $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man needs a god damn bullet and allegedly referred to him as that nigger, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in. The payment was made ... after a secret recording of Middlebrookss remarks was played to the citys police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian. Middlebrooks, 33, made the threatening comments to Biass brother-in-law during a May 2013 encounter at his home, which Bias was visiting. Police came to the home after they discovered an unleashed dog. A lawsuit from Bias that the city paid to settle before it reached court stated that ... the officer remarked to Biass brother-in-law, who is white, that he was tired of that nigger being released from jail. Middlebrooks allegedly said the police were going to pull [Bias] aside on a routine traffic stop and [Bias] would get killed.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
In some juvenile court systems around the country, young people regularly appear at hearings in handcuffs, leg irons, or both. But 21 states five this year alone have reformed such shackling practices. Skye Gosselin was 12 the first time court officers shackled her. She had been charged with disorderly conduct. At 14, she spent several hours handcuffed to another girl as she awaited her hearing, this time for skipping school. Then she was taken into court with metal bands wrapped around both her wrists and ankles, said the now-16-year-old. "The dehumanizing experience shaped not only how others saw me, but how I saw myself for many years. (It) made me think of myself as a criminal, [she said]. Children as young as 9 have been shackled, as have children who have been abused by their parents. Up to 100,000 youths are shackled each year. [Reformers] say the automatic use of restraints is not in line with the rehabilitative purpose of juvenile court, limits youths ability to participate in their defense, tends to hurt and humiliate them, and, in some cases, traumatizes them. It makes little sense that adult courts typically have to follow guidelines to determine if shackling is really needed, but juvenile courts in many states dont, says Shakyra Diaz, policy manager for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The US Supreme Court has ruled that routine shackling of adults in court is unconstitutional because it can undermine the presumption of innocence.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.
Aliens flew to earth on peace missions to prevent nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, according to a former Nasa astronaut. Dr Edgar Mitchell has made a series of increasingly bizarre claims about extra terrestrial life. His status as the sixth man to walk on the moon - during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 - gives his claims a ready audience. Now he says military top brass saw UFOs visiting Earth during weapons tests in the 1940s at American missile bases and the famous White Sands Proving Ground, in the New Mexico desert, where the world's first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945. "White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons - and that's what the extra-terrestrials were interested in ... they wanted to know about our military capabilities," [Mitchell said]. "My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth." He claims other officers manning missile silos or Pacific bases back up his claims with stories of alien spacecraft shooting down test rockets mid-flight.
Note: For more, read Edgar Mitchell's testimony on a major cover-up of UFOs. Then explore the highly reliable resources presented in our UFO Information Center.
In 1945, as a first-year student at Kyushu Imperial Universitys medical school in southern Japan, [Toshio] Tono became an unwilling witness to atrocities. Just weeks after he began his studies, a US B-29 Superfortress crashed in northern Kyushu island. The [surviving] airmen were rounded up by police and placed in military custody. The prisoners were led to believe they were going to receive treatment for their injuries. But over the following three weeks, they were to be subjected to a depraved form of pathology at the medical school procedures to which Tono is the only surviving witness. According to testimony ... at the Allied War Crimes Tribunals, they injected one anaesthetised prisoner with seawater. Other airmen had parts of their organs removed, with one deprived of an entire lung. In another experiment, doctors drilled through the skull of a live prisoner. The experiments had absolutely no medical merit, [Tono] said. They were being used to inflict as cruel a death as possible on the prisoners. Of the 30 Kyushu University doctors and military staff who stood trial in 1948, 23 were convicted of vivisection and the wrongful removal of body parts. But they were never punished. President Truman issued an executive order that led to freedom for imprisoned war criminals. By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals had been released and began reinventing themselves, some as mainstream politicians, under their new, US-authored constitution.
Note: The German Nazis conducted similarly horrifying experiments on humans, as described in this Harper's Magazine article. Many of the Nazi scientists involved were secretly brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip. And according to this disturbing essay of a survivor, Nazi torturers were brought to the US to train CIA to train operatives in how to create multiple personality super spies through torture, drugs, and hypnosis.
Sarah Chayes ... was a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio and was assigned in 2001 to cover post-Taliban Afghanistan. But she soon decided to put aside her reporting career [to] become a key player in the attempt to bring about a sea change in US foreign policy by showing how what some see as an innocuous crime corruption is actually a serious threat to international security. She has seen it at work not only in Afghanistan but in other places with violent insurgencies, such as Syria, Nigeria, and Iraq. In Afghanistan, the government was really a criminal organization masquerading as a government, she says. Its objective was amassing personal wealth, and it was doing this very well. The United States had aligned itself ... with a corrupt system by working through corrupt proxies and providing them with funds and other assets, she says. This made the US no longer a neutral player in the eyes of those being harmed by corrupt practices. In 2007 Chayes wrote a book, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, that showed how the corruption and warlordism in Afghanistan was supported by the US. It was read by academics and by those at high levels of the US military. In his final testimony to the US Senate, [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael] Mullen pointed to systemic corruption as the No. 1 challenge undermining US efforts in the region: Chayess issue had finally entered the conversation of high-level US decisionmakers.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Since HPV vaccines were introduced seven years ago, it has been assumed that they would prevent cervical cancer. But the vaccines have never been shown to prevent any cancer. It has also been assumed for seven years that the vaccine is safe. Yet there have been thousands of adverse event reports. The CDC itself admits there are three times as many adverse events for the HPV vaccine Gardasil as there are for all other vaccines combined. Compared to all other vaccines in the U.S. schedule, Gardasil alone is associated with 61 percent of all serious adverse events, including 63.8 percent of all deaths and 81.2 percent of all permanent disabilities in females under 30 years of age. Japan, India and France have removed HPV vaccines from their recommended list due to safety and efficacy concerns. The Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry of Japan also conducted a national investigation regarding post HPV vaccine injuries, [which] concluded that the harm experienced by women taking the vaccine is overwhelmingly greater than any expected benefits. Prompted by medical reports of post-HPV vaccination arrhythmia and motor neuron disabilities in children in Denmark, the European Medicines Agency is conducting an investigation of HPV injection adverse events. Lawsuits for HPV injuries and deaths have also been filed in Spain, France and Columbia.
Note: Read an article showing that several countries have filed lawsuits claiming damage from the HPV vaccine. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing vaccine controversy news articles from reliable major media sources.
One of the biggest corruption scandals to hit America's juvenile justice system began unfolding in 2007, when parents in a central Pennsylvania county began to complain that their children had been tossed into for-profit youth centers without a lawyer to represent them. The kickback scheme, known as "kids for cash," has resulted in prison terms for two Luzerne County judges and two businessmen. Convictions of thousands of juveniles have been tossed out. Now the case is entering its final chapter: a few remaining class action lawsuits. One of those claims drew to a close ... when a federal judge signed off on a settlement in which one of the businessmen, Robert Powell, would pay $4.75 million. Powell, who co-owned two private juvenile justice facilities, served an 18-month prison term after admitting to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to former ... Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. and his boss, Judge Michael Conahan. In return, Ciavarella routinely found children guilty and sent them to Powell's facilities. Ciavarella was convicted in 2011 of racketeering and other charges, and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Conahan, a friend of Powell's who oversaw the scam, pleaded guilty to racketeering and was sentenced to more than 17 years behind bars. A fourth conspirator ... pleaded guilty for his part in the plot and was sentenced to a year in prison.
Note: More than 5,000 kids were exposed to a court that jailed them for profit in this conspiracy involving just a handful of corrupt officials. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and civil liberties.
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