News Summaries from the WantToKnow.info Archive

Mainstream media often buries important news stories. PEERS is a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit that finds and summarizes these stories for WantToKnow.info's free weekly email newsletter and website. Explore below key excerpts of revealing news articles from our archive that were published on today's date in previous years. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. The most important sentences are highlighted. If you find a link that no longer works, please tell us about it in a comment. And if you find this material overwhelming or upsetting, here's a message just for you. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

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A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style

Published on this day in 2009, by New York Times

Original Article Source, Dated 2009-08-31

Every week, the nation’s mightiest banks come to his court seeking to take the homes of New Yorkers who cannot pay their mortgages. And nearly as often, the judge says, they file foreclosure papers speckled with errors. He plucks out one motion and leafs through: a Deutsche Bank representative signed an affidavit claiming to be the vice president of two different banks. His office was in Kansas City, Mo., but the signature was notarized in Texas. And the bank did not even own the mortgage when it began to foreclose on the homeowner. “I’m a little guy in Brooklyn who doesn’t belong to their country clubs, what can I tell you?” he says, adding a shrug for punctuation. “I won’t accept their comedy of errors.” The judge, Arthur M. Schack, 64, fashions himself a judicial Don Quixote, tilting at the phalanxes of bankers, foreclosure facilitators and lawyers who file motions by the bale. He has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesus-like wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model. Justice Schack, like a handful of state and federal judges, has taken a magnifying glass to the mortgage industry. Justice Schack’s take is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove ownership, it cannot foreclose. “If you are going to take away someone’s house, everything should be legal and correct,” he said. “I’m a strange guy — I don’t want to put a family on the street unless it’s legitimate.”

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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'Anti-cancer virus' shows promise

Published on this day in 2011, by BBC News

Original Article Source, Dated 2011-08-31

An engineered virus, injected into the blood, can selectively target cancer cells throughout the body in what researchers have labelled a medical first. The virus attacked only tumours, leaving the healthy tissue alone, in a small trial on 23 patients, according to the journal Nature. Researchers said the findings could one day "truly transform" therapies. Cancer specialists said using viruses showed "real promise". Using viruses to attack cancers is not a new concept, but they have needed to be injected directly into tumours in order to evade the immune system. The virus, named JX-594 ... was injected at different doses into the blood of 23 patients with cancers which had spread to multiple organs in the body. Prof John Bell, lead researcher and from the University of Ottawa, said: "We are very excited because this is the first time in medical history that a viral therapy has been shown to consistently and selectively replicate in cancer tissue after intravenous infusion in humans. Intravenous delivery is crucial for cancer treatment because it allows us to target tumours throughout the body as opposed to just those that we can directly inject."

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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Wall Street Whistle-Blower Awarded $22 Million for Revealing the Truth about Monsanto

Published on this day in 2016, by Vanity Fair

Original Article Source, Dated 2016-08-31

A whistle-blower who once worked for Monsanto walked away with a handsome payout for alerting regulators to accounting improprieties within the company, according to Reuters. Regulators will reportedly award the former executive with $22 million in connection with the $80 million settlement agreement Monsanto made with the S.E.C. over an incentive program the company ran to promote its trademark weed killer, Roundup. The $22 million payout is the second-highest sum the S.E.C. has given so far to a whistle-blower, behind a $30 million award paid in September 2014. The regulatory agency enacted a program to sweeten the idea of reporting impropriety in 2011, as part of the Dodd-Frank reforms. With between 10 and 30 percent of penalties or settlement agreements made with the government on the line, Wall Streeters and company insiders have all but lined up to tip off the S.E.C. Between September 2014 and September 2015 alone, the agency says 4,000 people forked over information, and more than 30 of them have pocketed a collective $85 million over the last five years.

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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How this NGO strives to 'make a difference in the lives of the poorest'

Published on this day in 2016, by Christian Science Monitor

Original Article Source, Dated 2016-08-31

A nondescript office building just a short walk from the Limmat River – which runs through the picturesque center of Zurich, Switzerland – houses the hub of Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation. The effect of the nongovernmental organization, however, is anything but ordinary. “We work for the poorest,” says Rupa Mukerji, co-head of advisory services for Helvetas and a member of its management board. The organization operates in 32 countries to address rural poverty, harnessing a $150 million annual budget and the efforts of some 1,500 staffers, more than 95 percent of whom are local to their projects. That mission is personal to Ms. Mukerji. “I am supporting a program in Mali where we are investing our own resources to develop a climate change plan,” she explains. “Many times climate change is seen as an issue of science ... but communities are already feeling the impact,” she says. Her home country of India has been suffering from serious drought – something she sees as showing why her work is so critical. “When you work at the field level, you see how hard [people] work, how difficult the conditions are. Many things they are facing are completely out of their control,” she says. “My passion lies in really addressing these global challenges, and to make life better for the people in these rural communities.”

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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Last Remaining U.S. Maker of Cluster Bombs Stops Production

Published on this day in 2016, by Foreign Policy

Original Article Source, Dated 2016-08-31

The last remaining U.S. manufacturer of cluster bombs is ending production of the controversial weapon, citing regulatory scrutiny and reduced orders for the internationally banned munitions. The decision by the Rhode Island-based Textron, whose subsidiary Textron Systems produces the bombs, follows a White House order last May to block the transfer of a Textron shipment of CBU-105 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. The White House had come under intense pressure by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International after those groups documented instances in which Saudi-led forces used CBU-105 munitions in multiple locations across Yemen. The blocked transfer was the first concrete step the United States took to demonstrate its unease with the Saudi bombing campaign. Following media coverage of the White House’s block, peace activists picketed outside the Wilmington, Massachusetts, offices of Textron Systems, calling for an end to the production of cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Mary Wareham praised the decision. “Textron was the last U.S. manufacturer of cluster munitions, so this decision now clears the path for the administration and Congress to work together to permanently end U.S. production, transfer, and use of cluster munitions,” she said.

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie

Published on this day in 2013, by The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

Original Article Source, Dated 2013-08-31

During January 2011, Anabel Hernández's extended family held a party at a favourite cafe in the north of Mexico City. As one of the country's leading journalists ... Hernández had to leave early, as so often, "to finish an article". After she left ... gunmen burst in. But this was no robbery – it was "pure intimidation, aimed at my family, and at me." Hernández's offence was to write a book about the drug cartels that have wrought carnage across Mexico, taking some 80,000 lives. Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers [is] about the mafia state; how the old Guadalajara cartel of the 1980s was protected by the Mexican government just as its heir, Guzmán's Sinaloa syndicate, is now. The threats began when Hernández's book was published in Mexico in 2010. Veteran reporter Mike O'Connor works full-time on behalf of Mexico's menaced reporters, based in Mexico City for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The silencing of the press and killing of journalists is integral to the reality, the big story, of what is happening here," explains O'Connor. "The cartels are taking territory. For the cartels to take territory, three things have to happen. One is to control the institutions with guns – basically, the police. The second is to control political power. And, for the first two to be effective, you have to control the press." Hernández is "very pleased my book is being published in English, so it can be read in London and New York. I want it published ... where HSBC took Chapo Guzmán's money."

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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US, UK Roles in Iran's Mass Executions

Published on this day in 2010, by PBS

Original Article Source, Dated 2010-08-31

With Mir Hossein Mousavi as the de facto leader of the opposition movement, the mass executions of the 1980s have become a hot topic among Iranians and Iran watchers, including many readers of this site. Mousavi was prime minister in that decade. Though this article was first published in 1986, it lends a new perspective to the issue, at least with respect to the thousands of executions that took place in the early 1980s. The CIA's assistance to Ayatollah Khomeini, which apparently prompted the executions, is not a well-known fact: The Reagan administration's secret overtures and arms shipments to Iran are part of a seven-year-long pattern of covert Central Intelligence Agency operations -- some dating back to the Carter administration -- that were designed both to curry favor with the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and support Iranian exiles who seek to overthrow it, according to informed sources. In 1983, for example, the CIA participated in a secret operation to provide a list of Soviet KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran to the Khomeini regime, which then executed up to 200 suspects. Khomeini also expelled 18 Soviet diplomats, imprisoned the Tudeh party leaders and publicly thanked God for "the miracle" leading to the arrests of the "treasonous leaders." At the same time, secret presidential intelligence orders, called "findings," authorized the CIA to support Iranian exiles opposed to the Khomeini regime, the sources said.

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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The modern US army: unfit for service?

Published on this day in 2012, by The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

Original Article Source, Dated 2012-08-31

Gone are the days of the all-American army hero. These days, the US military is more like a sanctuary for racists, gang members and the chronically unfit. In the relatively halcyon days of the first Gulf war in 1990, the US military blocked the enlistment of felons. It spurned men and women with low IQs or those without a high school diploma. It would either block the enlistment of or kick out neo-Nazis and gang members. It would treat or discharge alcoholics, drug abusers and the mentally ill. No more. Many of the wars' worst atrocities are linked directly to the loosening of enlistment regulations on criminals, racist extremists, and gang members, among others. By 2005, the US had 150,000 troops deployed in Iraq and 19,500 in Afghanistan. But the military wasn't prepared in any way for this kind of extended deployment. The slim forces needed fattening up and what followed constituted a complete re-evaluation of who was qualified to serve. Information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act ... found the number of convicted criminals enlisting in the US military had nearly doubled in two years, from 824 in 2004 to 1,605 in 2006. A total of 4,230 convicted felons were enlisted, including those guilty of rape and murder. On top of this, 43,977 soldiers signed up who had been found guilty of a serious misdemeanour, which includes assault. Another 58,561 had drug-related convictions, but all were handed a gun and sent off to the Middle East. [And] since its inception, the leaders of the white supremacist movement have encouraged their members to enlist. They see it as a way for their followers to receive combat and weapons training, courtesy of the US government.

Note: Read the complete summary and notes here

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With best wishes for a transformed world,
Mark Bailey and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info