The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is cracking down on the multi-billion dollar business of human trafficking in the U.S. In June, 1,700 people were arrested nationwide for allegedly committing child sex and exploitation crimes as part of a nationwide DOJ initiative called, “Operation Broken Heart.”

The World Health Organization has designated Ebola a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” as the deadly virus threatens all of humanity. World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom on July 19 accepted the Emergency Committee’s recommendation which reinforces that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

More and more new and expecting parents are going out of their way to ensure their children don’t consume toxin-laden foods, with many women opting for organic foods and natural ingredients during pregnancy and then extending this philosophy to their children once they move past breast milk. However, many of these same parents are far more lax when it comes to personal care products – and new research shows that this could come back to haunt them in the form of lung damage.

According to a database created by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists containing files leaked from the law firm Appleby, Jeffrey Epstein, who is under indictment as a sex trafficker and assaulter of underage girls, was the Chairman of Liquid Funding Ltd. from November 9, 2001 to at least March 19, 2007. The offshore business had been incorporated in Bermuda on October 19, 2000 and according to the Fitch ratings firm, it had $6.7 billion in outstanding liabilities in 2006.

Air attacks have killed at least 11 people in rebel-held northwestern Syria on Sunday, according to rescue workers and a war monitor. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that Syrian government air attacks killed six people, including a child, in the village of Urum al-Jawz in western Idlib province while four others, including two children, were killed in raids on Kfarouma in the south of the province.

Just in case we haven’t provided you with enough creepy dystopian news lately, the nation’s leader in Creepy Dystopia, California, has a brand new program. The “Cradle to Career Data System” will study and document everything about a child born in the state. But don’t worry, it’s for your children’s own good.

We consume plastic every day. And that quantity is growing as each day we let our planet get inundated in a plastic tide. The thick bed of plastic floating on the sea; the beasts and birds choking to death on plastic; it all used to be a part of the dining table conversation. And then suddenly we find that it is a part of our diet. We are surrounded by plastic and almost all of the food that the modern man consumes is either packed in plastic or has plastic mixed in it, in some form of the other.

Steve Bannon is making himself useful. According to The New York Times, he has rekindled the paranoiac fire that fed the Cold War military-industrial complex and stoked red hysteria far and wide.

Deutsche Bank is the most important bank in all of Europe, it has 49 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives, and most of the largest “too big to fail banks” in the United States have very deep financial connections to the bank.  In other words, the global financial system simply cannot afford for Deutsche Bank to fail, and right now it is literally melting down right in front of our eyes...

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, has arrived at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado to serve out a sentence of life plus 30 years handed down on Wednesday. He was also ordered to pay $12.6 billion in restitution. 

The United States is concerned that a "miscalculation" by Iran could cause an "unintended conflict" in the Gulf, as it prepares to launch a new surveillance and intelligence initiative with its allies to ensure "free and open passage" for ships. "We are starting a concept called Sentinel in which we will have a series of countries engaged to preserve the free and open passage of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Persian Gulf," US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood said at the Aspen Security Forum on Saturday.

Hackers have breached SyTech, a contractor for FSB, Russia's national intelligence service, from where they stole information about internal projects the company was working on behalf of the agency -- including one for deanonymizing Tor traffic.

Several years have passed since Biological Resource Center shut its doors, but new court documents detail the hidden horrors investigators found inside. Former FBI Assistant Special Agent Mark Cwynar's testimony says he observed buckets of head, arms and legs inside the building off 24th street and University Drive.

A school district in Pennsylvania has warned parents that their children could end up in foster care if overdue school lunch bills aren’t paid. About 1,000 parents in the Wyoming Valley West School District received letters outlining the new policy, leading to complaints from parents and the community. The letter indicates that the unpaid bills may lead to dependency hearings and ultimately the removal of the children for interfering with their “child’s right to food.”

Ukraine's Constitutional Court has upheld a law that equates communism to Nazism and bans the dissemination of its symbols, a law that has prompted angry protests from Moscow. In the July 16 ruling published on its website, the court said the "communist and Nazi regimes" used similar methods of "implementing repressive state policies."

The secret U.S. military base known as Area 51 has been on basically everyone’s mind this month, thanks to a strange viral campaign to raid it that has gathered a great deal of attention online. This week, entrepreneur and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang became the first—and perhaps only—candidate in the 2020 race to make a campaign promise in relation to Area 51.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it will not ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to health issues in children, from use on U.S.-grown fruits and vegetables. The agency denied the petition by a dozen environmental groups, led by Earthjustice, to ban the pesticide. They said studies show that exposures to the pesticide is liked to low birth weight, reduced IQ, attention disorders and other issues in infants and children.

The British government told its commercial vessels to avoid the strategic Strait of Hormuz after Iranian forces seized a UK-flagged oil tanker there, prompting a row with London. “We have advised UK shipping to stay out of the area for an interim period,” a government spokesperson said on Saturday. The decision was made after the cabinet convened for an emergency meeting in Whitehall.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has accused his own country's national space institute of lying about the scale of deforestation in the Amazon. He said the institute was smearing Brazil's reputation abroad by publishing data showing a dramatic increase in deforestation there.

The United States has authorised the deployment of military personnel and resources to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon has said, as tensions in the Gulf mount over the US's standoff with Iran, the kingdom's archrival. The Pentagon said in a statement on Friday that the move would provide "an additional deterrent" in the face of "emergent, credible threats" in the region.