News Stories
Excerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
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2025-11-24, New York Post
Posted: 2026-06-05 10:00:40
Advances in neurological medicine might seem like a boon to humanity. However, UK scientists are warning that the tech could also be used to develop “brain weapons” that can alter human consciousness, perception, or behavior. This apocalyptic “wake-up call” was floated in the book, “Preventing Weaponization of CNS-acting Chemicals: A Holistic Arms Control Analysis,” by researchers Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando. Dando, a biological and weapons control expert, said that the “same knowledge that helps us treat neurological disorders could be used to disrupt cognition” and “induce compliance.” It could even be used in the “future [to] turn people into unwitting agents,” like something out of a dystopian thriller, he argued. According to Crowley ... humanity has entered a new age of warfare where the “brain itself could become a battlefield” due to the increased ubiquity and sophistication of pharmaceutically-induced mind control. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states,” Crowley said. Dando and Crowley are traveling to the Hague ... for a key meeting of the Conference of the States Parties (CSP), an international body that oversees the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. While the convention prohibits the use of chemical weapons in war, there is a loophole that might permit their use in other sectors, like law enforcement. To safeguard against this possibility, Dando and Crowley propose a multi-pronged “Holistic Arms Control” approach.
Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. Learn more about biotech dangers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on non-lethal weapons and mind control.
2026-04-30, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:58:56
A small Wisconsin city has just notched a big win in its fight against a proposed data center, thanks to grassroots community organizing and support from a growing statewide coalition. And to help guide other communities facing similar challenges, organizers in Menomonie have helped develop a toolkit for taking on hyperscale data centers. As of last October, there were about 3,000 new data centers being built or planned nationwide. Soon, a wave of data center projects was washing over Wisconsin towns. Data centers bring few permanent jobs and can drain municipal water resources, drive up electric bills, rob cities of tax revenues, and cause damaging noise, light and air pollution. Residents in Port Washington have complained about the disruption caused by around-the-clock construction at the new data center. Families near the construction in Beaver Dam have reported that their wells have run dry. Menomonie residents took to social media and the streets to raise the alarm about the data center proposal and organize community members. They met to share information, staged demonstrations and began attending city council meetings in growing numbers. By September 2025, there were over 10,000 Menomonie residents and allies in a Stop the Menomonie Data Center Facebook group — more than half the town’s population. Pressure from local campaigners was so great that Mayor Randy Knaack announced at a September 22 city council meeting that he had notified Balloonist that the city would not be moving forward with a development agreement. More good news came in January when the Menomonie City Council voted unanimously to place additional regulations on data center projects.
One of the statewide coalition’s greatest achievements is the Big Tech Unchecked Toolkit. Published in December 2025 by Healthy Climate Wisconsin and other coalition partners, the toolkit includes information on what data centers are, their impacts on communities and success stories from struggles across Wisconsin, including Menomonie’s.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining the economy.
2025-07-04, The Guardian
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:57:31
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae. Egli is one of seven women incarcerated at the Mission Creek correctional facility, located a two-hour drive from Seattle, who are part of a year-long program that takes captured butterflies, harvests their eggs, and oversees the growth of the larvae before they are released into the wild where they will turn into adults. Last year, scientists working with the team released more than 10,000 larvae. Many of the women speak of their pride working on a project that feels like it is making a positive contribution to the world. Lynn Cheroff, 42, said she had been thrilled to talk about it with her two young children when they come to visit. Another woman, Jennifer Teitzel, appreciates the sense of order and discipline the program demands. Every detail about the eggs and larvae has to be collated and recorded. It is the women’s responsibility, and nobody else’s, seven days a week. The program run by Washington state department of corrections (DOC), is part of an effort to prepare the women for life once their sentences are over and to smooth the path to work or college. Kelli Bush, the co-director of Sustainability in Prisons Project, [says] the program also gives them confidence. “They reconnect with their own brilliance, they reconnect with their own intelligence,” she says. “It’s routine to hear people say ‘I didn’t think I was smart and I’m realising I’m doing science’.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
2024-01-25, The Guardian
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:56:32
At a portable cabin in Porto, addicts queue up to use heroin and crack cocaine in safety, with medical staff on hand. The government-funded service ... provides them with clean needles, strips of aluminium foil, and other materials to facilitate their drug-taking and prevent infections. The overarching ethos of the centre revolves around harm prevention. The centre ... serves as a highly visible flagship of Portugal’s long-standing policy of drug decriminalisation. Motivated by a widespread belief that the war on drugs was failing, the country’s lawmakers agreed to decriminalise the acquisition, possession and private use of small amounts of drugs [in 1999]. Since its inauguration, Porto’s centre has clocked up 63,000 visits from more than 2,000 drug users – the vast majority of whom use either crack cocaine or heroin. Only two overdoses have occurred, both of which were treated successfully on the spot. [Psychologist Diana] Castro also points to the 1,500 or so screenings undertaken, and the 89 individuals now receiving treatment for hepatitis C as a consequence. About 10 people have also entered detox programmes of their own volition. All those caught by the police with class A drugs are required to attend a government-run “integrated response” clinic, where their use levels are assessed and a treatment programme proposed. These clinics house psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, pharmacologists and primary healthcare specialists.
Note: Read more about Portugal’s innovative healthcare system that heavily emphasizes social prescribing to meet the deeper social, emotional, and community-rooted causes of addiction. Explore more positive stories on repairing criminal justice.
2026-05-06, Government Executive
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:49:26
Allegations of rape and sexual misconduct against federal corrections officers by inmates have spiked in recent years, the Government Accountability Office found in its review of enforcement of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). From 2014 through 2022, federal inmates logged nearly 4,000 complaints of sexual abuse against prison staff. Just 9% of those were substantiated by BOP, though 77% saw investigations end inconclusively. A similar trend emerged from sexual abuse allegedly committed by incarcerated individuals, with 81% of those cases reaching inconclusive findings. GAO separately found federal prison guards faced around 3,000 allegations of sexual abuse from 2020 through 2024, a significant uptick in incident rate from prior years. From 2014 through 2022, BOP averaged 433 allegations against its staff per year. In 2023 and 2024, that spiked to 857 per year. Employees told the auditors that they have insufficient staffing for responding to allegations of sexual abuse, including a shortage of investigators. Longstanding personnel shortages at the agency have led to less general supervision that in turn allows misconduct to fester, officials told GAO. Abusers also employ tactics to avoid repercussions. Most of the corrections officers with whom GAO spoke said abusers know where they can go to evade cameras and some said the video quality is poor or not retained for a sufficient amount of time.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
2026-01-29, Salon
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:48:11
The wave of violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection has brought law enforcement’s use of force coming under renewed scrutiny. So-called “less lethal” weapons are drawing criticism because these weapons, especially when misused by law enforcement, still seriously injure and sometimes kill. Kaden Rummler, a 21-year-old in Santa Ana, California, was shot in the face by a federal agent with a less lethal round while demonstrating against the killing of Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was killed by Jonathan Ross, a veteran ICE officer. In a video of the California shooting, the officer in question appears to point his weapon directly at Rummler’s face, fracturing his skull and leaving shrapnel in his face, ultimately rendering him blind for life in one eye and with serious injuries. Less lethal weapons refer to a broad category [including] weapons like stun guns, pepper spray and a variety of concussive projectiles. It also includes other crowd dispersal weapons like flashbang grenades and tear gas, the latter of which is banned in war among signatories of the Geneva Convention, but still commonly used by domestic law enforcement in many countries, including the U.S. Many of these weapons still have the potential to kill or maim the people they are deployed against, even in the best of circumstances. And often these weapons are not deployed as they are intended to be, resulting in more serious injury or death.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on non-lethal weapons and the erosion of civil liberties.
2017-11-10, Counterpunch
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:46:17
On November 18, 1953, a group of seven men gathered for a meeting. Three were from the US Army’s biological weapons center at Fort Detrick; the other four were CIA officers from the Agency’s Technical Services Division. [On] November 19, the scientists shared an after-dinner glass of Cointreau. The CIA’s Dr. Sidney Gottlieb had decided to spike the Cointreau with a heavy dose of LSD. Gottlieb didn’t tell the officers they had been drugged. One member of the group, Dr. Frank Olson from Fort Detrick ... became “psychotic.” Olson was the army’s foremost expert on biological warfare. Sidney Gottlieb’s deputy, Richard Lashbrook ... took Olson back to New York. Late that night, Lashbrook claimed, he awoke to see Olson run across the room and jump through a curtained and closed window. Olson crashed down to the street from the tenth-floor room. Lashbrook immediately began to cover the CIA’s tracks. His first phone call was not to a hospital or the police, but to Gottlieb. When the police arrived, Lashbrook told them ... that Olson might have killed himself because of job-related stress. Eric Olson was present when his father’s body was exhumed. The forensic pathologist, Dr. James Starrs ... found a deep bruise on Olson’s forehead. The bruise was severe enough to have rendered Olson unconscious, but probably didn’t result from the fall. Starrs also discovered no evidence of cuts from broken glass that should have been present had Olson leaped out a closed window.
Note: Explore the Frank Olson Project to find out more about this tragic case. Learn more about the CIA's MK ULTRA program. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
2026-04-26, The Intercept
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:44:57
Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time. The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.” The declassified documents, which the National Security Archive released between December 2024 and April 2025, are available through a special collection titled “CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MK-ULTRA.” [A] memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism “for personality control purposes.” In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six “hypospray” devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.”
Note: Read a timeline of known incidents of human experimentation. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
2025-05-14, MSN News
Posted: 2026-06-05 09:43:19
James Erdman III, a veteran CIA special operations officer, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the CIA monitored the phones and computers of Director’s Initiatives Group analysts investigating COVID-19’s origins. He said this surveillance included their investigative work and contact with whistleblowers, and involved Americans working under directives from the president and the Director of National Intelligence. Erdman said CIA analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a lab leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19, but that leaders altered these conclusions in public reports. He testified that in August 2021, just before a planned release of a lab-leak finding, Dr. Anthony Fauci met with intelligence officials and shared a list of experts he knew, after which the assessment was changed. Erdman also alleged the CIA removed MKUltra and JFK assassination files from the office of DNI Tulsi Gabbard before they were due for declassification. Representative Anna Paulina Luna accused the agency of defying a presidential order and gave a 24-hour deadline for their return, threatening a subpoena. The House Oversight Committee sent a notice to CIA Director Ratcliffe to preserve and return the documents, citing their relevance to ongoing inquiries. Senator Rand Paul, who chaired the hearing, said the testimony supported claims of a cover-up over COVID-19’s origins and broader transparency issues.
Note: Watch our 15-minute video on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the COVID cover-up
2025-05-21, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:47:58
This interim report highlights records the Subcommittee has reviewed regarding HHS’s awareness of and response to cases of myocarditis—a type of heart inflammation—following COVID-19 vaccination. [Some] documents ... have remained hidden from the public and Congress for years. U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis; Those officials downplayed the health concern; and U.S. health agencies delayed informing the public about the risk of the adverse event. The records [show]: The Israeli Ministry of Health notifying officials at the CDC in late February 2021 of “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.” Discussions among CDC officials in May 2021 on whether to issue a HAN [Health Alert Network message] on myocarditis, noting that health care professionals across the nation may not be aware of the risk because “providers aren’t reporting these cases to VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System].” A CDC official providing up-to-date information on the status of the HAN to Pfizer Inc. (“Pfizer”) and Moderna, Inc. (“Moderna”) representatives, indicating CDC’s preference to keep the vaccine companies more informed about vaccine adverse events, rather than the American people. Draft meeting notes from late May 2021 exchanged between U.S. public health officials which included the question: “Is VAERS signaling for myopericarditis now?”; and the answer: “For the age groups 16-17 years and 18-24 years, yes.”
Note: Our Substack investigation, The Nuanced View on COVID Vaccine Injuries and Lawsuits, examines how whistleblowers, FDA advisers, and vaccine-injured people exposed irrefutable evidence of COVID vaccine harms, data integrity issues, and failures within the VAERS reporting system. The investigation also explores how Big Tech platforms, pharmaceutical companies, and health organizations engineered the information environment around COVID through censorship and media manipulation.
2026-05-01, Mother Jones
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:45:20
Unbeknownst to most people, logging companies and the US Forest Service have been spraying massive amounts of herbicide in clear-cut and fire-ravaged forests of California—and throughout the nation. And not just any herbicide, but glyphosate, a potent and problematic weed killer best known by the brand name Roundup. My first hint of all this was a single word in a letter the Forest Service sent to me and my neighbors about a year and a half ago. Lassen, it said, was to be part of an ambitious new wildfire recovery project. This was welcome, as the fires had burned perilously close to our properties. Then I came to the word “herbicides.” The Forest Service would, starting in spring 2026, spray glyphosate on some 10,000 acres of public land in Lassen to wipe out leafy plants and shrubs that might compete with replanted conifers. The amount applied annually in state forests—266,000 pounds of pure glyphosate in 2023, the latest year for which data was available—is nearly five times what it was two decades ago. Monsanto orchestrated, financed, and even ghostwrote studies that were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals ... papers that state and federal agencies have relied upon to justify copious spraying of Roundup. The only potential human risk acknowledged in the Forest Service’s [risk] assessment has to do with people unknowingly ingesting glyphosate after foraging for mushrooms and plants in recently sprayed areas.
Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Bayer/Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on environmental destruction and toxic chemicals.
2026-04-30, The New Lede
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:43:20
Federal lawmakers on Thursday passed the House version of the Farm Bill, removing controversial language that would have provided some protections for pesticide companies facing lawsuits over alleged health harms. Members of the US House of Representatives voted 280-142 to pass an amendment to the bill striking sections that would have established “nationwide uniformity for pesticide labeling” effectively preventing states from leveraging labeling requirements aimed at protecting consumers. The provisions were aimed at blocking “failure to warn” claims against pesticide manufacturers like Bayer, which has been sued by more than 100,000 people around the US alleging the company failed to warn that glyphosate herbicides could cause cancer. The amendment ... also eliminates language that would have prevented states and local communities from establishing no-spray zones near schools, as well as a mandate that would have weakened protections from pesticide discharge for waterways. Even with the removal of pesticide preemption language ... the House Farm Bill includes the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act (EATS or Save our Bacon Act), a measure that would prevent state and local governments from “interfering” with interstate commerce by blocking their ability to pass ag policies. These include laws such as California’s Prop 12, which promotes humane treatment of livestock.
Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Bayer/Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on factory farming and toxic chemicals.
2026-04-27, US Right to Know
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:40:57
The Modern Ag Alliance, launched by Bayer in 2024, enables the company to lobby and campaign through an entity that looks like a coalition of farm organizations, not a single giant chemical corporation. MAA represents itself as a “diverse coalition, founded by Bayer, that today represents more than 110 agricultural organizations.” But public records suggest it functions as a front group for Bayer’s interests. Tax records reveal that a Bayer vice president sits on the board of directors, and nearly all of its budget has gone to a public relations firm that also works for Bayer. Bayer itself describes the MAA as a key part of its lobbying. The company has portrayed the MAA – whose tagline is “Pesticides power America’s ag” – as its strategy for “fighting back” against glyphosate concerns and lawsuits. MAA is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, a structure that allows it to raise unlimited funds for advocacy or lobbying while keeping donors secret. Disclosed members of the Modern Ag Alliance include large agribusiness trade groups, and national and state commodity crop growers’ groups. Many of these groups have financial relationships with Bayer and other pesticide firms, via sponsorships, partnerships or direct funding, though these ties are often opaque. The MAA lobbies for legislation that ... would make it harder for Americans to use state-law failure-to-warn claims to sue pesticide manufacturers for cancer and other injuries.
Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Bayer/Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and toxic chemicals.
2026-04-21, Business Insider
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:38:23
A new study suggests a common weed killer may be linked to the mysterious global rise of young colorectal cancer. The first-of-its kind study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Medicine, suggests that picloram — a herbicide used globally to kill woody plants and shrubs while keeping grasses intact — could explain the rising incidence of colon and rectal cancer cases in people under 50. [Senior study author Jose] Seoane's team found that certain "fingerprints" appeared in the DNA of young colorectal cancer tumors they studied, and those fingerprints were linked back to exposures, including: Smoking; Poor diets, lacking fresh vegetables, beans, nuts and other "Mediterranean" staples; Obesity; Educational attainment (which is also linked to poorer diets); and finally, the weed killer picloram. His team checked to see if this same pattern persisted across populations, comparing the incidence of young colorectal cancer in seven US states, including California, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington, to the level of county-wide pesticide use. The strongest pesticide signal of all tied to higher rates of young colon cancer was for picloram. (In second place was glyphosate.) Picloram, which was developed in the 1960s, was one of many herbicides used in the "agents" the US Military used to clear forest during the Vietnam War. It works by disrupting the way plant hormones normally function, and can persist in the soil for years.
Note: Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
2026-04-27, Science Daily
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:07:22
A major new study published in Nature Health has found a strong connection between environmental exposure to agricultural pesticides and an increased risk of cancer. Pesticides are commonly found in food, water, and the surrounding environment, often as complex mixtures rather than single substances. This has made their health effects difficult to measure. Most previous research has focused on individual chemicals in controlled settings, which does not reflect how people are exposed in real life. By combining environmental monitoring, national cancer registry data, and biological research, scientists from the IRD, Institut Pasteur, University of Toulouse, and the National Institute of Neoplastic Diseases (INEN) in Peru provide new insight into how pesticide exposure may contribute to the development of certain cancers. Peru ... includes regions with intensive agriculture, diverse climates and ecosystems, and significant social and geographic inequalities. "We first modeled the dispersion of pesticides in the environment over a six-year period, from 2014 to 2019, which allowed us to create a high-resolution map and identify areas with the highest risk of exposure," explains Jorge Honles, PhD in epidemiology at the University of Toulouse. The team then compared these exposure maps with health data from more than 150,000 cancer patients recorded between 2007 and 2020. Regions with higher environmental pesticide exposure also had higher rates of certain cancers. In these areas, the likelihood of developing cancer was about 150% greater on average. The research also highlights how pesticide exposure may affect the body long before cancer is diagnosed. Molecular studies conducted at the Institut Pasteur, led by Pascal Pineau, show that pesticides can interfere with processes that maintain normal cell function and identity. These disruptions occur early and may accumulate over time without obvious symptoms. Vulnerable populations, including Indigenous and rural communities, may face the greatest risks.
Note: This landmark study demonstrates a significant link between pesticide exposure on a national scale and biological changes that increase the risk of cancer. Our Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.
2026-04-13, Wired
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:04:51
Beneath the surface of the Strait of Hormuz and the surrounding Gulf lies a biological sanctuary. The region is home to around 7,000 dugongs and fewer than 100 Arabian humpback whales—a nonmigratory population that cannot leave these waters. Naval mines, residual military activity, and congested shipping lanes mean the strait remains a high-risk environment—not just for vessels but also for the ecosystems beneath them. Underwater explosions and military sonar don’t just scare whales, they can physically blind them, leading to stranding and death. The Arabian humpback whale, unlike its cousins in the Atlantic, does not migrate. For them, the Gulf is not a corridor but home, a permanent habitat. Olivier Adam, a researcher at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, says that the Gulf’s resident cetaceans—better known as marine mammals—have limited options: Either abandon their habitat or remain and endure prolonged exposure to noise. In the case of Arabian humpback whales, relocation is not realistic, as they are one of the only populations that do not migrate between feeding and breeding areas. “These baleen whales have no way to escape,” he says. Whales rely on sound for nearly every essential function: feeding, navigation, reproduction, and social interaction. When that acoustic environment is disrupted, the effects are immediate. In shallow coastal zones, where biodiversity is concentrated, even small disruptions can cascade through the ecosystem.
Note: Read more about the decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last decade resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the oceans. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and marine mammals.
2026-04-28, US Right to Know
Posted: 2026-05-18 11:02:46
The indictment Tuesday of a top adviser to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci on charges of conspiring against the United States casts a spotlight on years of efforts to subvert public records laws and conceal key COVID-era communications from the public. The adviser, David Morens ... is accused by federal prosecutors of using private email accounts to conduct government business, deleting records and coordinating with others to conceal communications related to COVID origins, high-risk coronavirus research and grant funding. According to the indictment, Morens and others agreed in writing to “intentionally hide” their communications from public records requests. Morens ... discussed strategies to “make emails disappear” to evade FOIA searches and avoided creating written records altogether – actions that Morens later admitted and apologized for during congressional testimony. Other records show Morens in ongoing contact with [Peter] Daszak and a small circle of allies after the pandemic’s onset. Their communications include strategizing about how to restore EcoHealth Alliance’s standing with federal funders, counter scrutiny from Congress and the media, and shape public narratives around the origins of COVID-19. While [Anthony] Fauci is not a direct participant in the communications cited in the indictment, the document refers to a “Senior NIAID Official 1” whose description corresponds with the former director.
Note: Watch our 15-minute video on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and the COVID cover-up.
2026-04-27, Space Daily
Posted: 2026-05-18 10:59:26
The single biggest predictor of how happy you are at any given moment isn’t your income, your relationship status, your health, your career, or the city you live in. It’s whether your mind is focused on what you’re doing right now or wandering somewhere else. That’s the whole finding. Present equals happy. Absent equals unhappy. Everything else is details. In 2010, Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a paper in the journal Science with a title that sounds like a Buddhist proverb: “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” They developed an iPhone app that pinged 2,250 people at random intervals throughout the day, asking three questions: What are you doing? What are you thinking about? How happy are you? People’s minds wandered from what they were doing 46.9 percent of the time. And when their minds wandered, they were consistently less happy than when they were focused on whatever was in front of them. This held true regardless of the activity. What you’re thinking about matters more than twice as much as what you’re doing. You could have the perfect life — the career, the partner, the health, the house — and spend most of it mentally somewhere else, and the somewhere else would make you miserable. We don’t struggle with presence during peak experiences. Nobody’s mind wanders during their wedding or the birth of their child or the moment they land the job they wanted. Those moments are vivid enough to command attention. They handle presence for you. The problem is that peak experiences make up maybe two percent of your life. The other ninety-eight percent ... is ordinary, and your capacity to be present during ordinary moments determines the quality of your entire existence. That’s where happiness actually lives. In the ninety-eight percent. In the ability to be present in an ordinary moment without wishing it were something else.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
2026-03-05, Scientific American
Posted: 2026-05-18 10:56:32
Many older adults also show significant improvements in their physical and cognitive health over time, according to a new study. The reason why seems to lie in how they think about aging. People who viewed getting older positively were more likely to show improvements in their cognitive skills and their walking speed. By contrast, folks in the study who held more negative ideas about aging tended to see a decline in these skills. That suggests people’s beliefs can have a dramatic effect on their biology, the researchers say. “Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life,” said study co-author Becca Levy. “And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level.” The new study included more than 11,000 adults aged 65 and up. 45 percent of the participants saw a positive development in either their scores on a cognitive test or their walking speed—a critical measure of fitness. Notably, when the researchers averaged the participants’ scores, they saw an expected decline in ability as people aged. But on the individual level, that picture didn’t hold up for everyone. “Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” Levy said. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on amazing seniors.
2026-03-30, Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: 2026-05-18 10:53:52
When Jamie Schuler teaches her Friday dance classes, some of her students stay seated. Most of the up to two dozen dancers have Parkinson’s disease or other conditions that impact their mobility. A mashup of physical therapy and artistic expression developed by New York’s Mark Morris Dance Group, Schuler’s classes are designed to help participants manage aspects of their diseases, like coordination, balance and gait, while declaring dance an art form for everyone. Some of the dancers have even joined 3rd Law, the company that puts on the classes, in live, on-stage professional performances. Community-based workshops like this reflect a growing body of scholarship linking the arts to improved outcomes in physical and mental health. The research is fueling a push to make arts more accessible ... while hospitals, therapists and clinical researchers are increasingly bringing art and culture into environs for healing. Today, about half of U.S. hospitals have some kind of arts program. But UF Health has uniquely interwoven its arts program with its medical practice. Through the hospital’s chart system, doctors and nurses make referrals to UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, which includes a roster of in-house artists. In 2025, practitioners with the program had 13,000 arts engagements with the health system’s patients, ranging from dance classes for expecting mothers in high-risk pregnancies, to painting or making mosaics with young patients.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on inspiring disabled persons and the power of art.
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