News Articles
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Information Centers.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has denied funding studies that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans after it was accused of doing so following the release of research proposals. The documents were obtained and released by The Intercept. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University ... told Newsweek these documents show "unequivocally" that NIH grants were used to fund controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China—something U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied. GOF research ... potentially makes the virus more dangerous to humans.. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, told Congress in May that the NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." Ebright said: "The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID director, Anthony Fauci ... are untruthful." What the NIH has denied is funding GOF research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous, such as by improving its lethality or transmissibility. Ebright said this appeared to be false by his interpretation of the documents released by The Intercept. NIH grants supported the construction of mutant SARS-related coronaviruses. At least three of the lab-generated viruses "exhibited >10x to >100x higher viral loads in humanized mice."
Note: Read what happened when the publisher of The Real Anthony Fauci tried to place a full page ad in the New York Times for this #1 best seller. And why have all major media refused to review this book which is rated 4.8 stars on amazon and has over 2,000 footnotes to back up the claims made? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
ProPublica cracked open the vault on America’s biggest tax grifters, revealing how the Midas men dip, dodge and duck, paying pennies on the dollar, if that, while we suckers have to pony up. How rich. “In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes,” ProPublica reported. “He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. “Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.” “Taken together,” ProPublica concluded, “it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The I.R.S. records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.” ProPublica shed light on the fact that “the superrich earn virtually all their wealth from the constantly rising value of their assets, particularly in the stock market, and that the sales of those assets are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income from a paycheck.” And while the value of those assets grows by the billion, untaxed, these rich folks can borrow against them.
Note: Read more in this revealing alternet.com article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.
Now that the 2020 figures have been properly tallied, there is still no convincing evidence that strict lockdowns reduced the death toll from COVID-19. But one effect is clear: more deaths from other causes, especially among the young and middle-aged, minorities and the less affluent. The best gauge of the pandemic’s impact is what statisticians call excess mortality, which compares the overall number of deaths with the total in previous years. That measure rose among older Americans because of COVID-19, but it rose at an even sharper rate among people aged 15 to 54, and most of those excess deaths weren’t attributed to the virus. Preliminary reports point to some obvious lockdown-related factors. There was a sharp decline in visits to emergency rooms and an increase in fatal heart attacks because patients didn’t receive prompt treatment. Many fewer people were screened for cancer. Social isolation contributed to excess deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s. Researchers predicted that the social and economic upheaval would lead to tens of thousands of “deaths of despair” from drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. As unemployment surged and mental-health and substance-abuse treatment programs were interrupted, the reported levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts increased dramatically, as did alcohol sales and fatal drug overdoses. The number of excess deaths not involving COVID-19 has been especially high in US counties with more low-income households and minority residents.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla told NBC’s Dateline host Lester Holt that the pharmaceutical company was “not certain” if the vaccine prevented the coronavirus from being transmitted, saying: “This is something that needs to be examined.” In a prime-time special titled “Race for a Vaccine” ... Holt questioned Bourla and other individuals involved in the development and distribution of the vaccine. In November, Pfizer announced that its vaccine candidate had been shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 and has applied for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The U.K. became the first country to approve Pfizer’s vaccine this week with the first round of immunizations expected to roll out next week. In August, Canada signed a deal with Pfizer for 20 million doses of the vaccine. In a list of interview highlights released before the special, Holt asked Bourla: “Even though I’ve had the protection, am I still able to transmit it to other people?” “I think this is something that needs to be examined. We are not certain about that right now with what we know,” Bourla responded.
Note: An MSN article reported that a 41-year-old Portuguese health worker died two days after getting the Pfizer vaccine, but then removed the article. Learn more about this death in this article. A Florida doctor also died after receiving the vaccine. This CDC report states “December 14–23, 2020, monitoring … detected 21 cases of anaphylaxis after administration of a reported 1,893,360 first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.” For more, explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Coronavirus Information Center.
The actual number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. reached nearly 53 million at the end of September and could be approaching 100 million now, according to a model developed by government researchers. The model, created by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calculated that the true number of infections is about eight times the reported number, which includes only the cases confirmed by a laboratory test. Preliminary estimates using the model found that by the end of September, 52.9 million people had been infected, while the number of laboratory-confirmed infections was just 6.9 million, the team reported in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "This indicates that approximately 84% of the U.S. population has not yet been infected and thus most of the country remains at risk," the authors wrote. Since then, the CDC's tally of confirmed infections has increased to 12.5 million. So if the model's ratio still holds, the estimated total would now be greater than 95 million, leaving about 71% of the population uninfected. The model attempts to account for the fact that most cases of COVID-19 are mild or asymptomatic and go unreported. Scientists used studies looking for people who have antibodies to the coronavirus in their blood – an indication that they were infected at some time – to estimate how many infections went undetected. Some of these antibody studies have suggested that only about one in 10 coronavirus infections is reported.
Note: If this is true, it means the number of deaths compared to number of cases is much lower than has been estimated. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
The worlds wealthiest individuals have become even richer during the coronavirus pandemic as the prices of financial assets have been supported by widespread policy intervention while employment and wages, well, not so much. The Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington, chronicles just how bifurcated the road the recovery from an economy slump is likely to be. At the upper end of the spectrum, the combined wealth of all U.S. billionaires increased by $821 billion or 28% between March 18, 2020 and September 10, 2020, from approximately $2.947 trillion to $3.768 trillion. That means they own the equivalent of nearly 20% of U.S. gross domestic product. The richest five billionaires, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk, saw a 59% increase in their total wealth, from $358 billion to $569 billion. One University of Chicago study found that, between the start of February and the end of June, the lowest-income group had the highest job loss rate while the highest-income workers had the [lowest] rate of lob losses. Black and Hispanic workers were also much more likely to become unemployed during the pandemic than Whites despite their predominant role in work deemed ... essential. As the pandemic forced many industries into remote work, millions of Black and Hispanic workers have been left out. Only 19.7% of Black and 16.2% of Latinx people work in jobs where they are able to telework, compared to 29.9% of White and 37.0% of Asian workers, the report said.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and income inequality from reliable major media sources.
When the Federal Reserve needed Wall Street’s help with its pandemic rescue mission, it went straight to Larry Fink. The BlackRock cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer has become one of the industry’s most important government whisperers. The company’s new assignment is a much bigger version of one it took on after the 2008 financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve enlisted it to dispose of toxic mortgage securities. This time it will help the Fed prop up the entire corporate bond market by purchasing, on the central bank’s behalf, what could become a $750 billion portfolio of debt. One part of the Fed’s plan is to buy bond exchange-traded funds. BlackRock itself runs ETFs under the iShares brand, and could end up buying funds it manages. “BlackRock is acting as a fiduciary to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” says a spokesman for the company. “As such, BlackRock will execute this mandate at the sole discretion of the bank.” The arrangement is bringing new attention to the company’s scale and ubiquity. “It’s impossible to think of BlackRock without thinking of them as a fourth branch of government,” says William Birdthistle, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. BlackRock’s growth raises questions over how big and useful a company can become before its size poses a risk. And then there are the potential conflicts. One arm of BlackRock knows what the Fed is buying, while other parts of the business participating in credit markets could benefit from that knowledge.
Note: Watch an excellent documentary showing how BlackRock, Vanguard, and several other institutions are the largest shareholders in almost every major corporation you can think of. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the financial industry from reliable major media sources.
YouTube has removed two videos of California doctors ... Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi of Bakersfield, California [which] downplayed the risk of the coronavirus and asserted that stay-at-home measures were unnecessary. Facebook, however, has not removed the doctors' videos. The different reactions of YouTube and Facebook highlight the challenges of moderating high-stakes misinformation as it goes viral, especially when it is considered to be expert opinion. The video removed by YouTube showed a one-hour news conference livestreamed by local media, including NBC and ABC affiliates in Bakersfield. By Wednesday, the video had been seen at least 15 million times. Erickson and Massihi, owners of several urgent care centers in the area, presented data from 5,213 COVID-19 tests. The data, they claimed, showed that the coronavirus was widespread in the community already but had caused few deaths. Their data, they said, supported the need to rethink state stay-at-home measures. Furthermore, Erickson ... claimed that COVID-19 death numbers were inaccurate, citing other unnamed doctors in Wisconsin and California who he said had told him that they were urged to list the disease as a cause of death even if it was unrelated. "The only justification for taking it down was that the two physicians on screen had reached different conclusions from the people currently in charge," said Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Massihi posted a video to his personal Facebook page Tuesday thanking supporters while insisting that their comments were meant only to share their own data, not to drive national or even state policy.
Note: Watch an excellent follow-up interview with Dr. Erickson exposing further deception. Even if these doctors are wrong about some of their conclusions, don't they have a right to express their opinions? Will anyone who disputes the claims of government officials be banned from expressing their opinions on social media? Sadly, this BBC article shows that is already true for the coronavirus on YouTube. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Warring gangs in South Africa are working together in an unprecedented truce to deliver much-needed food to people under lockdown. The country has seen a 75% decrease in violent crime since it imposed strict restrictions over the coronavirus pandemic, and normally dangerous streets in Cape Town now see sworn enemies meeting up to collect essential goods to distribute throughout hungry communities. "What we're seeing happen here is literally a miracle," Pastor Andie Steele-Smith said. Steel-Smith works with gang members in his community, many of whom are convicted killers. "They are the best distributors in the country," he said. "They are used to distributing other white powders, but still they are distributing things and then, they know everybody." Preston Jacobs, a member of the "Americans" gang, told CBS News' Debora Patta it "feels nice" to take on a new role and communicate with those in need. "Now I see there are nice people also, and people want to love what we're doing now," Jacobs said. Sansi Hassan of the "Clever Kids" gang expressed hope that this current ceasefire in gang violence could be permanent in the post-lockdown future. "If it can stay like this, then there will be no gang fight," he said. "And every gang will agree with us." Pastor Steel-Smith remains optimistic for his community. "I am proud of you guys," he said to two gang members working to distribute essential goods. "If I died today and went to heaven, I would die a happy man."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The latest threat to global health is the ongoing outbreak of the respiratory disease that was recently given the name Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). The Covid-19 outbreak has posed critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities. In their Journal article, Li and colleagues provide a detailed clinical and epidemiologic description of the first 425 cases reported in the epicenter of the outbreak: the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China. A degree of clarity is emerging from this report. The median age of the patients was 59 years, with higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions (similar to the situation with influenza). Of note, there were no cases in children younger than 15 years of age. Li et al. report a mean interval of 9.1 to 12.5 days between the onset of illness and hospitalization. On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
Note: The main author of this article, Anthony S. Fauci, is the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Consider the research of 12 other experts questioning the coronavirus panic. Explore also this excellent article which covers key, vitally important aspects of this pandemic that few have considered. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus pandemic from reliable major media sources.
If you don’t want to know how easy it is for a canny individual - or a malicious state actor - to hack into the electronic voting technology used in the U.S., don’t watch Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections. In this unnervingly persuasive HBO documentary, directors Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale marshal cyber-security experts, statisticians and lawmakers to expose cracks in the system that could easily allow hackers to affect voting results. The filmmakers’ sources also include actual hackers, among them an individual who breached Alaska’s voting system in 2016 just to see if he could. One of the central figures of Kill Chain is election-security expert Harri Hursti, who explains, with clarity, just how vulnerable American voting systems are. Although voting machines are supposed to be kept in secure facilities, Hursti found a widely used model for sale - on eBay. The vendor had hundreds of them. Hursti bought a few, using them to explain how easily their workings could be examined and breached. He also brought a selection of voting machines to Def Con, a three-day conference for hackers, and invited attendees to go at them; one expert quickly figured out how to shut down a machine remotely from a laptop. The U.S. voting system is, as several interviewees in Kill Chain put it, a bipartisan concern; still, as the documentary notes, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has blocked votes on the Secure Elections Act and four similar bipartisan bills.
Note: Hackers can easily breach electronic voting machines. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on elections corruption from reliable major media sources.
As China encourages people to return to work despite the coronavirus outbreak, it has begun a bold mass experiment in using data to regulate citizens lives by requiring them to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed into subways, malls and other public spaces. The system does more than decide in real time whether someone poses a contagion risk. It also appears to share information with the police, setting a template for new forms of automated social control that could persist long after the epidemic subsides. The Alipay Health Code, as Chinas official news media has called the system, was first introduced in the eastern city of Hangzhou ... with the help of Ant Financial, a sister company of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. People in China sign up through Ants popular wallet app, Alipay, and are assigned a color code green, yellow or red that indicates their health status. The system is already in use in 200 cities and is being rolled out nationwide, Ant says. As soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled reportInfoAndLocationToPolice sends the persons location, city name and an identifying code number to a server. The software does not make clear to users its connection to the police. In the United States, it would be akin to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using apps from Amazon and Facebook to track the coronavirus, then quietly sharing user information with the local sheriffs office.
Note: Learn in this revealing article how China is blacklisting certain citizens using this system and "banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or travelling by air or train, as the use of the governments social credit system accelerates." Learn more about the serious risk of the Coronavirus increasing the surveillance state in this excellent article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks. Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called model bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them. A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation. USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language. Model bills passed into law have ... limited access to abortion and restricted the rights of protesters. In all, these copycat bills amount to the nations largest, unreported special-interest campaign, driving agendas in every statehouse and touching nearly every area of public policy. USA TODAY found more than 4,000 bills benefiting industry were introduced nationwide during the eight years it reviewed. More than 80 of those bills limit the public's ability to sue corporations, including limiting class-action lawsuits, a plaintiff's ability to offer expert testimony, and cap punitive damages for corporate wrongdoing.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Jolly West, a doctor and MKUltra contractor, reported in 1956 that, through the use of LSD and other drugs, he could “speed the induction of the hypnotic state and deepen the trance,” after which he could replace “true memories” with “false ones” in people’s minds without them knowing it. Two years earlier, a 34-year-old Air Force sergeant with no history of violent or criminal behavior murdered a three-year-old girl in an apparent trance state. West was assigned to be the man’s psychiatric expert. It turned out that the sergeant had been, ostensibly, undergoing an experimental treatment for his migraine headaches at the base. The son of Andrija Puharich — an American physician, scientist, and inventor who used teenagers in his psychic experiments — gave documentary filmmaker Greg Mallozzi access to his father’s archive, which includes numerous recordings. “I worked as a consultant to the CIA,” Puharich says in one of them. “My boss was the chief medical director who’s in charge of all the dirty tricks stuff when it came to drugs and hypnosis and all the mind manipulation stuff.” Toward the end of his life, Puharich became a whistleblower and publicly lectured about the dangers of the experiments and the US government’s role. Annie Jacobson, author of Phenomenon, confirmed that Puharich “was there in the very first moments when this all took off in the late 1940s and early 50s.” A 1957 FBI memo reported that Puharich “uses various electronic equipment and drugs in his experiments and appears to be dedicated to the study of the science of transmitting messages from one person to another through mental telepathy.” The memo notes that Puharich served in the Army Medical Corps at the Army Chemical Center at Edgewood, Maryland, the installation at the center of the military’s early LSD work. Puharich’s work, which covered both drugs and psychic phenomena, may have bridged two separate government programs, MKUltra and the Stargate Project, which investigated the use of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis from 1972 to 1995. Former President Jimmy Carter revealed that the CIA had, on at least one occasion in the late 1970s, effectively used a psychic. “We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic — a twin-engine plane, a small plane. And we couldn’t find it,” Carter told GQ in 2005. “The director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California who claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went into a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.”
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) whistleblower and former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch accused intelligence agencies Tuesday of hiding billions of dollars in secret government spending from Congress. His investigation uncovered what he described as “slush funds” — pools of money allegedly operating outside normal congressional oversight channels — worth billions of dollars annually that were allegedly used to support activities operating outside normal oversight channels, Grusch said speaking at a Capitol Hill event alongside members of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. “This is also a real fraud, waste and abuse issue,” Grusch said. “During my investigation, I found slush funds to the tune of billions of dollars per annum for these activities.” Asked what the government knows about nonhuman intelligence, Grusch claimed the government is aware of “several” different alien species. “It’s a continuum from corporeal bipedal type life to, you know, what I would consider is like sentient plasma life,” Grusch said. “But there are several that this government is aware of.” Federal investigators recently alleged that former CIA official David Rush used a fraudulent “special access program” as part of a scheme involving more than $40 million in gold bars and millions in government funds, drawing renewed attention to how highly restricted government programs can operate with limited outside visibility.
Note: Don't miss our new video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity w/ Daniel Sheehan and Amber Yang. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
For decades, regulators viewed chlorpyrifos — a pesticide widely used in the U.S. and around the world — primarily as a neurotoxin that disrupts signaling in the brain and nervous system. Growing evidence suggests chlorpyrifos may damage the brain, hormones, liver, gut microbiome, muscles, reproductive organs, and bones. Studies also link the pesticide to DNA damage and lasting changes in gene activity that may increase the risk of chronic disease. Together, the findings portray chlorpyrifos as what the reviewers call a “multi-system toxicant” that poses a more significant threat to public health than previously understood. It suggests the pesticide acts on the body in ways far beyond disrupted nerve signaling or obvious poisoning. Pregnancy and early childhood are especially sensitive periods for chemical exposure. “What has genuinely evolved over time is our understanding that chlorpyrifos causes harm in ways that go beyond its effects on the nervous system including damage to DNA, changes in how genes are switched on or off, interference with hormones, and disruption of the healthy bacteria that live in the gut,” said Dr. Dana Boyd Barr. current regulatory systems may not fully capture the complexity of chlorpyrifos’ dangers to the body. Many occur at levels too low to be detected by current safety testing, which looks for the disruption of an enzyme involved in nerve cell communication.
Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years.
Mushrooms could be used to filter out harmful waste and sewage in rivers, after a trial showed a certain fungi can destroy a type of bacteria that is a risk to human health. The fungi, called turkey tail mushroom, was used in part of a river in Devon and managed to filter out 80% of E. coli bacteria during the trial. During the trial, bags of turkey tail mushrooms were stacked across a riverbed, filtering water through their roots, which are called mycelia. The mycelia acted like a sponge, catching the E. coli bacteria to prevent it going into the river. Water industry regulator Ofwat has given Anglian Water £1.5 million to use fungi to clean up rivers because the trial worked so well. In another trial in Lincolnshire, a similar barricade caught 83% of phosphorus and 35% of nitrogen from rainwater running off farmers' fields. Farmers spread these chemicals as fertilisers, but when they wash into watercourses they can cause thick algae to form, starving fish of oxygen. The mushroom barriers could be placed near sewage overflow pipes to remove pollutants released during storms. Mushrooms can be used as a packaging material. Mycelium has been used by ... companies for packaging, because [it] breaks down naturally within weeks of use. And fashion designer Stella McCartney came up with a really fun-gi idea a few years ago. She created the first ever clothing made of mushroom leather, using the mycelium. Mushroom leather, unlike other fake leathers, is entirely natural and biodegradable.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
Jacquie Sullivan, the longest serving member of the City Council in Bakersfield history, is now in retirement, battling a foe tougher than any she faced in seven elections: Parkinson’s disease. Kern County [is] the largest consumer of the deadly herbicide Paraquat in California. Over a five year period, 2017 to 2021, Kern County farmers sprayed 1.2 million pounds of the stuff on local ag land, along with tons of other herbicides. No wonder Kern County is also No. 1 in the state for Parkinson’s disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disorder. Loss of smell and shoulder pain are among the early symptoms. Tremors, slowing of movement, difficulty sleeping and stiffness can come later. Then in more advanced stages, loss of cognitive ability. An estimated 117,000 Californians are living with the disease — the highest per capita level in the country. Those who work directly with certain chemicals, including herbicides, face even higher risks, up to 400% higher. But you don’t have to be in direct contact with the spray to suffer harmful exposure. Drinking well water in certain agricultural areas increases risk by 70 to 90%. In 2024, the State Assembly approved a “moratorium” on paraquat use that would have taken effect this past January, giving state regulators an opportunity to reevaluate paraquat and potentially reapprove the chemical with or without new restrictions. But state Senate amendments killed all the restrictions.
Note: The 1982 neurotoxic contaminant MPTP case was a turning point in showing how a single toxin could instantly trigger Parkinson’s by destroying a specific part of the brain. Scientists later discovered that paraquat — a widely used US pesticide banned in over 70 countries — attacks the brain in much the same way. As rates of Parkinson’s have tragically surged especially among the farming community, neurologists now say the disease is largely environmentally caused, driven by long-term exposure to chemicals like paraquat. A 2024 Politico article put it bluntly: “Parkinson’s is a man-made disease.”
54-year-old fisherman [Ganeshbhai Devjibhai Varidum] was on a trawler off the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat. They had mistakenly caught a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. Up to 40 feet in length ... the whale shark is as long as a city bus. Twenty-five years ago, the giant animal would have been killed. But Varidum did something extraordinary: He cut the net, which would have cost him upwards of $2,500, to free the shark. “Watching it go free gave me peace of mind.” Found in tropical waters in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, whale sharks ... are known as the sea’s gentle giants. Their interactions with humans are peaceful and curious, but they face a number of manmade threats. Until the late 1990s, the shores of Gujarat were ground zero for whale shark hunting. Their fins, oil and even meat were lucrative commodities. "400 to 500 of these gentle giants were being killed every year in India,” [says Vivek Menon, co-founder of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI)]. In response, the Trust started a conservation program in 2002, and their first breakthrough came about ... thanks to [Hindu spiritual leader Morari Bapu]. When the WTI team told him about whale sharks there, he began urging his listeners to protect the fish in his sermons. The whale shark went from being nameless in the local language to becoming the “vhali,” or beloved one. “Bapu made me realize that the whale shark is the largest fish in the sea but it never harms anyone,” Ratilal Bamaniya, an elected leader of a fisher village on the Gujarat coast, says. “So why should we harm it? The whale shark is like my daughter. If she hurts, I hurt.” In 2006, the forest department introduced a compensation scheme to pay fishers for net repairs after whale sharks have been released unharmed — a simple but vital recognition of the role fishing communities play in protecting whale sharks. To document these releases for compensation, WTI has distributed over 1,500 waterproof cameras to fishers, helping establish a shared data repository. More than compensation ... it seems fishers have come to be motivated by the respect and public attention that each rescue elicits.
Note: Don't miss the incredible pictures of whale sharks and their rescuers at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on marine mammals.
Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been googling himself regularly. We see Epstein shoot off emails to associates, complaining that his digital footprint includes factual information about his crimes. Epstein regularly directed his gripes at Al Seckel, a fixer type who appears over and over in Epstein files and promises to bury news articles and other content that mentions his abuse. SEO consultants, contacts in the sciences, and even unrelated acquaintances helped to obscure Epstein’s past. In October 2010, Seckel laid out an overview of the group’s plan of attack to defend Epstein’s reputation online. The situation, as Seckel described it, was that a search surfaced “over 75+ pages of derogatory material,” and that someone would be “very hard pressed to find any ‘positive’ references.” To “balance the only one-sided negative opinion that has been spread over a wide birth on the Internet,” Seckel said, the team would need to flood the zone with content they can control, specifically pointing to spinning up websites with original content related to Epstein’s connections to science and charities. A “Phillipine Crew” ... would spread flattering links around the web, and other tasks. Part of how Google decides which pages to rank highly in search results is by looking at whether other sites link to a page; Epstein’s camp appears to have been trying to push down negative search results by securing valuable links from outside entities.
Note: Another email shows Al Seckel reporting to Jeffrey Epstein that they have successfully manipulated Google search results to bury negative news articles about Epstein, making it difficult to find information about him, even when searching terms like "pedophile." Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking—Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and Big Tech.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
