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Category: Journalism

PCBs Poison America’s Teachers & Students, But EPA & Monsanto Won’t Take Responsibility

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

A toxic chemical that used to be prevalent in construction materials may still be hiding in the walls of thousands of American schools, and experts believe the EPA is doing too little to prevent it from poisoning a new generation of children.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, a family of chemicals better known as PCBs, were commonly used in building materials until 1979, when they were finally banned due to the threat they pose to human health.

But the damage had already been done, according to Al Letson, the host of the Reveal podcast.

Beyond ISIS: Orlando Mass Killing Is About Much, Much More Than ‘Radical Islam’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

In the wake of the worst mass killing on U.S. soil since 9/11, politicians and the media seized on the killer’s purported declaration of allegiance to Middle Eastern terrorist groups as an excuse to demand more military intervention overseas and an increasingly militarized homeland.

Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando on Sunday, reportedly declared allegiance to Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the the terrorist group known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) during a 911 call placed just before he began his attack.

As journalists and investigators piece together the evidence, a complex picture is emerging of a conflicted man whose hate and violence were decidedly homegrown.

But this hasn’t stopped the presumptive presidential nominees from both major political parties from using Mateen’s actions as an excuse to call for waging more war and expanding the power of domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Corruption At The UN: Whistleblower Investigated, Child Sexual Abuse Ignored

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

A whistleblower who alerted authorities to the alleged rape of children by U.N. peacekeepers resigned after top U.N. officials investigated him instead of investigating the accusations he called attention to.

When U.N. officials failed to act on a confidential report which accuses French troops of sexually abusing refugee children in the Central African Republic, Anders Kompass, field operations director at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, leaked the report to the French government in 2014.
According to a June 7 report from IRIN, a news site focused on global humanitarian emergencies, “The alleged abuse involved hungry children – as young as eight – in the M’Poko camp for displaced people, coerced into sex in return for food or a little money.”

Now Kompass is calling it quits. He told Obi Anyadike, IRIN’s editor-at-large, that the situation has made it “impossible for me to continue working there.”

From ABCs To CBD: New Jersey, Colorado Allow Students Medical Marijuana At School

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

As more families press for their children to be allowed to consume medical cannabis at school, more states are moving toward allowing students access to the substance that remains banned at the federal level.

Last week, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed “Jack’s Law,” which will allow students with a prescription to receive non-inhaled medical marijuana during the school day. The law is named for a young student who couldn’t access his prescribed medical cannabis at school. CBS Denver reported on June 7.

“We absolutely need to allow children to have access to medicine in schools. Why wouldn’t we?” said Kyle Sherman, the founder and CEO of Flowhub, in an interview with MintPress News. Flowhub is a Denver-based software company that helps growers and dispensaries maintain their supply chains and follow local laws.

Saudi Arabia’s Threats Against UN Put Millions Of Middle Eastern Children At Risk

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

The Saudi-led attack on Yemen has drawn international criticism for the extremely high civilian death toll, including many children, and the brutal war crimes that have caused widespread starvation and suffering.

So how did the Gulf kingdom and its allies get taken off a United Nations blacklist of countries which harm and kill children? Apparently, the Saudis threatened to cut funding to crucial programs, or even place the U.N. under an Islamic religious ban through a mass fatwa.

It’s a move that’s drawing renewed criticism of the Saudi role in the international peacekeeping authority, even from the highest offices in the U.N. itself.

Domestic Workers Remain Enslaved In Saudi Arabia: ‘I Thought They Would Kill Me’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Despite reassurances by U.S. government officials that Saudi Arabia is taking steps to end slavery within its borders, human rights experts believe the problem is still widespread, especially among the Gulf kingdom’s domestic workers.

“I thought they would kill me. I had to escape. I wasn’t given enough to eat. They had my wages, my passport, my phone,” said Kasthuri Munirathinam, a domestic worker from India who escaped imprisonment in Saudi Arabia, in an interview with Thomas Reuters Foundation.

“She had been in Saudi Arabia for just two months, one of thousands of Indians heading to the Gulf states every year for work, but was terrified she would never see her family again,” Anuradha Nagaraj reported on May 3.

Last September, news of Munirathinam’s daring escape from a second floor apartment went viral. Her employer chopped off her hand during her efforts to free herself, an injury that would ultimately require the amputation of her arm.