<p><center><h1>News Summaries from the WantToKnow.info Archive</h1></center></p>
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<p>Mainstream media often buries important news stories. <a href="http://www.peerservice.org/">PEERS</a> is a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit that finds and summarizes these stories for WantToKnow.info's <a href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/subscribe.php">free weekly email newsletter</a> and <a href="https://wanttoknow.info">website</a>. 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. <strong>The most important sentences are highlighted.</strong> 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, <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/overwhelmed">here's a message just for you</a>. By educating ourselves and  <a href="https://www.WantToKnow.info/spreadtheword">spreading the word</a>, we can and will <a href="https://www.WantToKnow.info/brighterfuture">build a brighter future</a>.</p><hr>
<p><h3>Prosecutor turned up on U.S. terror watch list</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2008, by <em>USA Today</em>/Associated Press</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-07-14-justice-terror-list_N.htm">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2008-07-14</p><p>The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the U.S. government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he is one of them. Robinson joined [with] the <a href="http://www.aclu.org/">American Civil Liberties Union</a> on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year. He [said] "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced." [The watch list] was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists. Audits of the watch list over the last several years ... have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent people whose names are similar to those on it. <strong>More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006. The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday.</strong> The civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department's inspector general.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-prosecutor-turned-up-us-terror-watch-list">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Paying Farmers to Go Organic, Even Before the Crops Come In</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2016, by <em>New York Times</em></h4></p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/business/paying-farmers-to-go-organic-even-before-the-crops-come-in.html?_r=0">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2016-07-14</p><p>Companies can’t get enough organic ingredients to satisfy consumer desire for organic and nongenetically modified foods. The demand for those crops outstrips the supply, leaving farmers like [Wendell] Naraghi racing to convert their land to organic production, an arduous and expensive process. “Customers are asking for it,” said Mr. Naraghi, who is in the process of transitioning 300 of his 3,000 acres of orchards this year. “And we listen to our customers.” <strong>The clamor for organic crops is so intense that major food brands, like General Mills, Kellogg and Ardent Mills, are helping to underwrite the switch</strong>. General Mills, for instance, recently signed a deal to help convert about 3,000 acres to organic production of alfalfa and other animal feeds. Ardent offers farmers a premium for crops grown on land while a farm transitions to organic. In the most recent government tally, in 2011, organic farmland, including that used for grazing, was less than 1 percent of crop land in the United States. But the consumer demand is accelerating the conversion process. Sales of organic products grew 11 percent last year to $43.3 billion, or roughly four times the growth in sales of food products over all. Sales would have been even higher had supply, particularly in organic dairy and grains, kept up with demand. As much as 20 percent of cropland in America could be organic in the next decade or so, but land suitable for transition is getting harder to come by.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-paying-farmers-go-organic-even-before-crops-come-">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>FDA spied on whistle-blowing scientists</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2012, by <em>San Francisco Chronicle/New York Times</em></h4></p><p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/FDA-spied-on-whistle-blowing-scientists-3707658.php">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2012-07-14</p><p><strong>A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists utilized an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails</strong> that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show. What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency's medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort. Moving to quell what one memo called the "collaboration" of the FDA's opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and "defamatory" information about the agency. <strong>The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home.</strong> The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter, years-long dispute between the scientists and their bosses at the FDA over the scientists' claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-fda-spied-whistleblowing-scientists">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Wall Street sleaze keeps growing</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2012, by <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> (San Francisco's leading newspaper)</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Wall-Street-sleaze-keeps-growing-3705814.php">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2012-07-14</p><p>Just when you thought Wall Street couldn't sink any lower - when its excesses are still causing hardship to millions of Americans and its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system - an even deeper level of public-be-damned greed and corruption is revealed. Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide - mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. It's compiled by averaging the rates at which the major banks say they borrow. So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclays, a big, London bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders' e-mails give a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. But<strong> Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects - JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America - because every major bank participates in setting the Libor rate, and Barclays couldn't have rigged it without their witting involvement.</strong> In fact, Barclays' defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same reason. And Barclays is "cooperating" (i.e., providing damning evidence about other big banks) with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-wall-street-sleaze-keeps-growing">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Why does everyone feel so sorry for men accused of being predators?</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2014, by <em>The Guardian</em> (One of the UK's leading newspapers)</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/14/men-accused-predators-young-women-shamed">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2014-07-14</p><p>Why is it – in a culture purporting to take allegations of sexual assault and harassment seriously – that victims suffer more social punishment than their accused attackers? Young women are shamed, harassed and called whores while the men accused get rallied around. The misplaced empathy makes predators' lives easier and assaults more difficult to punish. Immediately after a guilty verdict came down in the much-watched Steubenville sexual assault case, for example, CNN reporter Poppy Harlow bemoaned the lost "promising futures" of the two convicted rapists. She failed to observe, in that moment, that the verdict didn't ruin their lives – their decision to rape did. But at least those rapists actually served time; the <a href="https://www.rainn.org/">Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network</a> (Rainn) reports that only three out of every 100 rapists go to jail. This is in large part because of how under-reported sexual assault is: according to the US Justice Department, over 60% of rapes and 74% of sexual assaults aren't reported to police. Given the abysmal way female sexual assault survivors are treated by the criminal justice system – and society more broadly – these numbers shouldn't be shocking. Given all this, it seems odd that we continue to worry about the reputations of men who are accused of sexual wrong-doings. <strong>Until we shame attackers with the same contempt that so many people reserve for women who come forward – until we shift the disdain from victim to perpetrator – rape, sexual assault and harassment will continue to run rampant and predators will continue to attack.</strong></p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-why-does-everyone-feel-so-sorry-men-accused-being-predators">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Tesla test drive: Smooth, silent, fast</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2012, by <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em> (San Francisco's leading newspaper)</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tesla-test-drive-Smooth-silent-fast-3706414.php">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2012-07-14</p><p>A word of caution about the Model S, Tesla Motors' new electric sedan:<strong> The S stays smooth and silent, even when it's flying down the highway. Absent gears, engine noise or any vibration that doesn't originate with a pothole, it's absurdly easy for Model S drivers to shred speed limits without the slightest clue.</strong> Depending on the range of the battery pack and other options, Model S prices range all the way from $57,400 to $105,400 before state and federal incentives. The Model S functions much like a typical, automatic transmission sedan. But it's not quite the same. Put the car in drive and take your foot off the brake pedal, for example, and the S doesn't go anywhere. It just sits there until you touch the accelerator. Push the accelerator, and the car responds instantly. There's no sense of an engine laboring to pick up speed.  Like other electric vehicles, the Model S uses regenerative braking. The brakes capture some of the moving car's kinetic energy, convert it to electricity and use it to recharge the battery while you drive. It's one of the ways <strong>a Model S with the most expensive battery pack option can drive more than 300 miles without plugging in.</strong> With the Model S, the regenerative braking starts the moment you ease off the accelerator pedal. The drop in speed is so pronounced that the car's brake lights will go on, even before you touch the brake pedal itself. It feels almost like having two separate braking systems working at the same time.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-tesla-test-drive-smooth-silent-fast">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Can GM mosquitoes rid the world of a major killer?</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2012, by <em>The Guardian</em> (One of the UK's leading newspapers)</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/15/gm-mosquitoes-dengue-fever-feature">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2012-07-14</p><p>The mosquitoes developed and raised here at the laboratories of Oxitec, a British biotech company based near Didcot, have already infiltrated wild populations in Brazil, Malaysia and the Cayman Islands. The company hopes that it will reduce populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes by 80%. [Oxitec] is primarily focused on ... the <i>Aedes aegypti</i> mosquito, which carries [dengue fever]. The main weapons against <i>A aegypti</i>, pesticides and education, have had little success in preventing its spread. <strong>Oxitec's chief scientific officer ... came up with an alternative using genetic modification. He produced mosquitoes that were engineered</strong> to need an antibiotic, tetracycline, to develop beyond larval stage. Critics of Oxitec say that the company is rushing to commercialise its products to provide a return on investment, massaging research while leaving key questions unanswered. Earlier this year, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany examined information regarding the release of modified insects into the environment in Malaysia and Grand Cayman, which were carried out by Oxitec. The scientists' findings suggest that there are "deficits in the scientific quality of regulatory documents and a general absence of accurate experimental descriptions available before releases start". <strong>Oxitec is now producing mosquitoes in Brazil. It recently reported that it reduced the number of <i>Aedes</i> mosquitoes by 85%</strong>, compared with an area where the company's mosquitoes weren't released.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-can-gm-mosquitoes-rid-world-a-major-killer">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Libor: They all knew – and no one acted</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2012, by <em>The Independent</em> (One of the UK's leading newspapers)</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/libor-they-all-knew--and-no-one-acted-7942451.html">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2012-07-14</p><p>Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic failed to act on clear warnings that the Libor interest rate was being falsely reported by banks during the financial crisis, it emerged last night. A cache of documents released yesterday by the New York Federal Reserve showed that <strong>US officials had evidence from April 2008 that Barclays was knowingly posting false reports about the rate at which it could borrow in order to assuage market concerns about its solvency. </strong>An unnamed Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, Fabiola Ravazzolo, on 11 April 2008: "So we know that we're not posting, um, an honest Libor." He said Barclays started under-reporting Libor because graphs showing the relatively high rates at which the bank had to borrow attracted "unwanted attention" and the "share price went down". The verbatim note of the call released by the Fed represents the starkest evidence yet that Libor-fiddling was discussed in high regulatory circles years before Barclays' recent £290m fine. The New York Fed said that, immediately after the call, <strong>Ms Ravazzolo informed her superiors of the information, who then passed on her concerns to Tim Geithner, who was head of the New York Fed at the time. </strong>Mr Geithner investigated and drew up a six-point proposal for ensuring the integrity of Libor which he presented to the British Bankers Association, which is responsible for producing the Libor rate daily. Mr Geithner, who is now US Treasury Secretary, also forwarded the six-point plan to the Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-libor-they-all-knew--no-one-acted">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Citigroup to pay $7 billion for ‘egregious misconduct’ leading up to financial crisis</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2014, by PBS</h4></p><p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/citigroup-pay-7-billion-egregious-misconduct-leading-financial-crisis/">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2014-07-14</p><p>JUDY WOODRUFF: “We should start praying. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of these loans went down” — that’s what a trader at Citigroup wrote in an e-mail in 2007, after reviewing thousands of mortgages bought and sold by the bank. Today, the Justice Department cited those very words as it announced a $7 billion settlement with the bank. <strong>The government said Citi committed egregious misconduct in the lead-up to the financial crisis. Of the $7 billion, Citigroup will pay $4 billion to the Justice Department. More than $2.5 billion is set aside for what’s described as consumer relief.</strong> Tony West is associate attorney general. And he was the government’s lead negotiator in this case. Lay out for us, what was this egregious conduct and how many people at Citigroup were engaged in it? TONY WEST: Citibank packaged securities, packaged loans, mortgage loans into these securities, which they sold to investors. What they didn’t tell investors was what the actual quality of those loans were. And so you had these mortgage bond deals that had quality that was far less than what Citi was representing to investors that they were. JUDY WOODRUFF: And how many people knew about this, and did the knowledge go all the way to the top? TONY WEST: We know from the evidence that bankers were warned that the quality of the loans that they were packaging into these securities wasn’t what they were telling investors they were, but they ignored those warning signs. They ignored that due diligence. Certainly enough ... bankers knew that we felt that we could demand a very high, in fact, an historically high, penalty from Citibank. </p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-citigroup-pay-7-billion-egregious-misconduct-leading-up-financial-crisis">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Underground Lab Tackles Japan Nuclear Waste Issue</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2014, by ABC News/Associated Press</h4></p><p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/underground-lab-tackles-japan-nuclear-waste-issue-24547278">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2014-07-14</p><p> Reindeer farms and grazing Holstein cows dot a vast stretch of rolling green pasture here on Japan's northern tip. Underground it's a different story. Workers and scientists have carved a sprawling laboratory deep below this sleep dairy town that, despite government reassurances, some of Horonobe's 2,500 residents fear could turn their neighborhood into a nuclear waste storage site. Japanese utilities have more than 17,000 tons of "spent" fuel rods that have finished their useful life but will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. What to do with them is a vexing problem that nuclear-powered nations around the world face, and that has come to the fore as Japan debates whether to keep using nuclear energy after the 2011 disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant. The answer to that problem may lie in the <strong>Horonobe Underground Research Center, which has been collecting geological data to determine if and how radioactive waste can be stored safely for as long as 100,000 years in a country that is susceptible to volcanic activity, earthquakes and shifting underground water flows. But as with America's doomed Yucca Mountain project, finding a community willing to host a radioactive dump site is proving difficult,</strong> even with a raft of financial enticements. One mayor expressed interest in 2007, and was booted from office in the next election.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-underground-lab-tackles-japan-nuclear-waste-issue">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2011, by <em>New York Times</em></h4></p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/europe/14church.html">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2011-07-14</p><p>The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the cover-up by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by the Irish government. Abuse victims called the report more evidence that the church sought to protect priests rather than children. <strong>The Cloyne Report, as it is known, drafted by an independent investigative committee headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, found that the clergy in the Diocese of Cloyne, a rural area of County Cork, did not act on complaints against 19 priests from 1996 to 2009.</strong>  The Cloyne Report is the Irish government’s fourth in recent years on aspects of the scandal. It shows that abuses were still occurring and being covered up 13 years after the church in Ireland issued child protection guidelines in 1996, and that civil officials were failing to investigate allegations. The report warned that other dioceses might have similar failings. Most damaging, the report said that the Congregation for the Clergy, an arm of the Vatican that oversees the priesthood, had not recognized the 1996 guidelines. That “effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures” and “gave comfort and support” to priests who “dissented from the stated Irish church policy,” the report said.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-irish-report-finds-abuse-persisting-catholic-church">here</a></p><hr>
<p><h3>Organic foods are more nutritious, according to review of 343 studies</h3></p><p><h4>Published on this day in 2014, by <em>Los Angeles Times</em></h4></p><p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715-story.html">Original Article Source</a>, Dated 2014-07-14</p><p>Most everyone who has ever selected their fruits and vegetables from the "organic" section while grocery shopping probably thought they were doing something good for their bodies and the environment. Yet the question of whether organic foods are in fact more nutritious than their conventionally grown counterparts remains a topic of heated scientific debate. On [July 14], the <em>British Journal of Nutrition</em> published research that disputed the notion that organic foods are essentially no more healthful than conventional foods. After reviewing 343 studies on the topic, researchers in Europe and the United States concluded that <strong>organic crops and organic-crop-based foods contained higher concentrations of antioxidants on average than conventionally grown foods.</strong> At the same time, the researchers found that conventional foods contained greater concentrations of residual pesticides and the toxic metal cadmium. <strong>"This shows clearly that organically grown fruits, vegetables and grains deliver tangible nutrition and food safety benefits,"</strong> said study coauthor Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University's Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.</p><p><strong>Note</strong>: Read the complete summary and notes <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/a-organic-foods-more-nutritious-according-review-343-studies">here</a></p><hr>
<p>With best wishes for a transformed world,<br>
Mark Bailey and <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info/aboutus#burks">Fred Burks</a> for <a href="https://www.peerservice.org">PEERS</a> and <a href="https://www.wanttoknow.info">WantToKnow.info</a>
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