BabyNewsArtical: March 2019

Sunday 31 March 2019

Pope issues new child abuse legislation for Vatican City

Pope Francis issued stringent child abuse legislation for Vatican City employees on Friday, as part of the Church's bid to address a wave of sex abuse allegations against priests. The legislation requires officials and employees in the Vatican City State as well the Roman Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church, to immediately report any abuse against minors and vulnerable people or face fines or a prison sentence. Francis said in a letter released with his "motu proprio" decree that it was the duty of everyone "to generously welcome children and vulnerable persons, and to create a safe environment for them".

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'That's unacceptable': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stops person who insulted Republican

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shut down an audience member at an MSNBC town hall after someone called former Rep. Bob Inglis a "moron."

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Chance of UK 'no-deal' Brexit has risen 'sharply', says France

French President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday the risk of Britain leaving the European Union without a deal had risen "very sharply" following parliament's rejection of Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement for a third time. "France is well prepared (for no deal) and will accelerate its preparations for such a scenario," the Elysee said in a statement. It said it was now up to Britain to present an alternative plan in the coming days -- whether new elections, a second referendum, or a proposal for a customs union -- otherwise the country would leave the EU with no deal.

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Corporations are endangering Americans. Trump doesn't care

From Boeing to Monsanto and beyond: this week has revealed the tip of the iceberg of regulatory neglect ‘Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please.’ Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weedkiller? Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators. These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people. To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please. Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design. Nonetheless, Trump’s FAA certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the US was slower to ground them than other countries. Last week Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm. In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing – not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that. Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers. Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought the vaping company Juul. Its stock has already gained 14% this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after barely a year on the job. Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud. But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals. What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged. This week, a federal jury awarded $80m in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weedkiller for his cancer, after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts. What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017 its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer – although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data. These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration. This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life. Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it is in deep trouble. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

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IKEA's New Eco-Friendly Collection Is Our Summer Aesthetic

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The Latest: Rockets fired from Gaza into Israel

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Latest on protests at Gaza border with Israel (all times local):

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The Stuff of Saturn's Rings Actually Coats Its Tiny Ravioli Moons

A new analysis of the ringed planet's inner moons shines a light on their origins.

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Mueller Did the Right Thing

It seems that “13 hardened Democrats” or “angry Democrats” did not deliver a politically motivated, illegitimate hit job after all. Based on what we know so far, the special counsel’s office reported that it did not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This is a fabulous vindication of the integrity of the system.No one is noticing that. Instead, the Trump team is gorging on schadenfreude, and the anti-Trump team is choking on bile.It’s fair to say that those who spent hour upon cable-TV hour lovingly anticipating that President Trump would be frog-marched from the White House in handcuffs after the delivery of this report have egg on their faces. It isn’t clear which hurts more, the disappointment about being wrong or the worry about drooping ratings.But there’s plenty of egg to go around. Team Trump spent nearly two years denouncing the Mueller investigation as a “rigged witch hunt.” By one count, the president used the term “witch hunt” more than 1,100 times. He mercilessly eviscerated his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for the sin of following Justice Department guidelines instead of corruptly abusing his office to shield Mr. Trump from scrutiny. At various times, the president has also suggested that the inquiry was a sinister plot of the “deep state”; a ploy by supporters of “crooked” Hillary Clinton to extract revenge (while also suggesting that the real collusion was between Democrats and the Russians); and an “illegal hoax” perpetrated by the “fake news” media. President Trump claimed that the Mueller probe was staffed by “very bad and conflicted people” and that the investigation was a “disgrace to our nation.”The battle space was thus prepared for a Mueller report that would be devastating to the president. His supporters would disbelieve anything that reflected badly on Trump because the investigation itself, along with the law-enforcement bodies tasked with carrying out their responsibilities in an impartial fashion, had been discredited.Yet, when it turned out that the investigators did not invent or plant evidence, did not default to process crimes such as lying to investigators, did not spring a perjury trap, and, above all, did not permit their own feelings or political preferences to taint the administration of justice, there has been no embarrassment from Team Trump. On a dime, they have reversed themselves completely. A totally corrupt witch hunt has become a total vindication. (It wasn’t that. Even Attorney General William Barr’s letter acknowledged that the report did not “exonerate” the president on the charge of obstruction of justice.) But even if it had been a clean bill of health, how can they trust the Mueller people? Weren’t they thoroughly corrupt? A disgrace?President Trump has a long history of impugning anyone or anything he perceives as a threat to his own interests and flattering anyone he thinks can help him. When he feared he would lose an election, he denounced the voting as “rigged.” Judge Curiel became a “Mexican” judge when Trump feared he might rule against him in the Trump University case. Gold-star parents, deceased heroic senators, Charles Krauthammer, S. E. Cupp, Jeff Bezos, and an endless list of others have joined the ranks of the slighted. On the other hand, if you repent and join the Trump fan club -- as pretty much the entire invertebrate Republican party has done -- then you are swiftly forgiven and elevated. Lindsey Graham went from “nasty” and “dumb mouthpiece” to favorite golfing buddy in a trice.This transparently solipsistic approach to the world would be of little interest if it were just a quirk of a New York businessman. But when Trump employs the tactic to undermine confidence in institutions such as the justice system, he does lasting damage.The “witch hunt” was nothing of the kind. Honorable people did the right thing. Politics did not taint a criminal investigation. But that reality is buried under an avalanche of bad faith.© 2019 Creators.com

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'Hoarder' pleads guilty to potentially largest theft of classified information in history

A former US National Security Agency contractor, portrayed as an eccentric hoarder by his lawyers, pleaded guilty on Thursday to stealing classified documents in a deal likely to put him in prison for nine years. Harold Martin, 54, who worked for several private firms and had clearances to access top secret information, was arrested over two years ago for what may have been the biggest breach of classified information in history. When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided his home south of Baltimore in 2016 they found stacks of documents and electronic storage devices amounting to 50 terabytes of files, including classified ones, prosecutors said. US Department of Justice prosecutors said in a statement that Mr Martin's actions risked the disclosure of top secret information to America's "enemies." One of their allegations was that Mr Martin talked online with people in Russian and other languages but they never found proof he shared stolen information with anyone. His lawyers said he was a hoarder who liked to take work home with him. "His actions were the product of mental illness. Not treason," lawyers Deborah Boardman and James Wyda said in a statement. Mr Martin and the government agreed that if the federal court in Baltimore accepted the plea agreement, he would be sentenced to nine years in prison on the charge of willful retention of national defense information, prosecutors said.

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What's Next in Brexit? A Cliff-Edge and a Summit: Timeline

May’s team says she’s going to keep fighting to get a deal done quickly enough to avoid a long extension that would require the U.K. to take part in European elections -- but it’s far from clear the EU will agree. April 1: Lawmakers to vote on alternatives to May’s Brexit deal. By now the U.K. has to decide if it’s holding European Parliament elections.

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Investigators believe anti-stall system activated in Ethiopia crash: WSJ

Investigators probing the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 Max in Ethiopia have reached a preliminary conclusion that a suspect anti-stall system activated shortly before it nose-dived to the ground, the WSJ reported Friday citing people familiar with the matter. The findings were based on flight recorder data and represented the strongest indication yet that the system, known as MCAS, malfunctioned in both the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10 and the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last year, the Wall Street Journal said. US government experts have been analyzing details gathered by their Ethiopian counterparts for the past few days, the newspaper added, and the emerging consensus was relayed at a high-level briefing of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Thursday.

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Taipei's goes dark for Earth Hour

Taiwan's tallest building joined cities around the world to mark Earth Hour by turning off its lights on Saturday in a call for global action on climate change. (March 30)

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Viking Sky cruise timeline: A breakdown of what we know happened

Here's a breakdown of everything we know so far about the Viking Sky cruise.

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Pet zebra shot and killed by owner in Florida after escaping

A man has shot and killed his pet zebra after it escaped from his ranch in Callahan, a town in Florida.The animal, reportedly named Shadow, broke free from Cottonwood Ranch and ran down a main road, chased by several vehicles.Witnesses said the zebra was eventually cornered in a cul-de-sac around two miles from the ranch, where the owner shot and killed it.Bill Leeper, the local sheriff, said he understood that Shadow was injured during the escape and that the owner chose to euthanise the zebra while police officers were at the scene.Witnesses told WJXT-TV that the animal did not appear injured but the decision was made to kill it so that it could not hurt anyone.“I had to stop and think a minute,” Jenee Watkins told the news outlet.“It’s not every day you see a zebra trotting through your neighbourhood.”Officials have confirmed that the owner did not have a valid license to keep a zebra on his ranch.A state permit is required to own and keep a zebra in Florida.It is unclear whether he will face charges over the lack of permit.Officials said the investigation into the animal’s escape and death was ongoing.

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Turks vote in local elections which could see Erdogan lose in big cities

Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years thanks to strong economic growth and supreme campaigning skills, has become the country's most popular, yet also most divisive, leader in modern history. With the economy contracting following a currency crisis last year in which the lira lost more than 30 percent of its value, some voters appeared ready to punish Erdogan who has ruled with an increasingly uncompromising stance. This week, as authorities again scrambled to shore up the lira, Erdogan cast the country's economic woes as resulting from attacks by the West, saying Turkey would overcome its troubles following Sunday's vote and adding he was "the boss" of the economy.

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Alex Jones blames conspiracy claims on 'psychosis'

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blamed the various claims he's made over the years, including that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, on "psychosis," according to a deposition the "Infowars" host has given as part of a Texas lawsuit.

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Trump threatens to shut border with Mexico next week

The president returns to a familiar threat as Democrats continue to deny him funding for construction of a border wall.

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US woman kidnapped in Afghanistan says husband's abuse was just like captors'

Caitlan Coleman says her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, was violent towards her before, during and after their kidnapping Caitlin Coleman leaves the Ottawa court house in Ottawa, Ontario, on Wednesday. Photograph: Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty Images A Canadian man who was kidnapped with his wife in Afghanistan was controlling and violent towards her before, during and after their five-year hostage ordeal, she told a Canadian court on Friday. Caitlan Coleman, 33, gave testimony for a second day at the trial of Joshua Boyle, 35 who faces 19 criminal charges, including sexual assault, unlawful confinement and uttering death threats. Coleman was pregnant when she and Boyle were kidnapped by a Taliban-linked group while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2011. They spent five years as hostages, and had three children together before they were rescued by the Pakistani military. Coleman testified that during their captivity in the hands of the militant Haqqani network, Boyle dictated all aspects of her life. His behaviour “was just like my captors’”, she told the court. “I was never to disagree with him, even on small things,” she told the court. “In the past, he made it clear he didn’t feel any guilt hurting me.” Coleman, dressed in a white blazer, black dress and black headscarf, spoke through video link in an adjoining room in order to avoid being in the same room as Boyle. She had travelled from Pennsylvania, where she currently lives with her family, to testify. Boyle, wearing a navy blazer and maroon pants, sat at the front row of the courtroom, frequently taking notes on a yellow legal pad. He was briefly joined by his parents. Coleman described a pattern of abusive behaviour that culminated in a vicious assault after the couple had returned to Canada, in which Boyle demanded sex then hit her when she refused. She told the court she felt “very, very frightened” during the 27 November incident. “Josh told me to get on the bed. He took ropes he kept in a bag … and he started to tie my hands and legs.” Boyle sexually assaulted her, then refused to release her, Coleman told the court. “He said he couldn’t trust me, so he wasn’t going to untie me,” she said. She was only able to free herself after Boyle fell asleep, she told the court. “Looking back, I should have tried to leave,” she said. “But I didn’t.” In her previous testimony, Coleman had described a “rollercoaster” relationship with Boyle, whom she met at age 16 in a Star Wars-themed online chatroom. “He was my first kiss,” she told the court on Wednesday. Coleman quickly fell in love with Boyle, but she told the court that he became an emotionally and physically abusive partner, critiquing her drinking and interactions she had with men. Coleman told the court that the abuse continued in Afghanistan, where the final two years of captivity were the worst. He would choke, bite and spank her as punishment, she said. While in captivity, Boyle demanded she remain in a bathroom stall for extended periods of time – telling his wife he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Coleman testified that Boyle also joked about killing her by lighting her on fire or spilling cooking oil on her. “This was probably the darkest period of my life,” she told the court. During their five years as prisoners in Afghanistan, the couple and their small children are believed to have been shuttled between more than 20 locations. The court had previously heard that Boyle’s violence continued after the couple returned to Canada. Coleman testified that he would often hit her and demand sex; on one occasion, he forced her to swallow powerful sleeping medication, she testified. “He stood in the bathroom and watched me take them that time … I took them because I knew that if I didn’t he would hit me harder,” she told the court on Wednesday. On Friday Coleman told the court that when the couple was back in Ottawa, Boyle gave her a detailed list of rules dictating her diet, weight, appearance and frequency of sex. “I would be punished if I did not follow this list,” she testified, adding that Boyle withheld meals from her, and threatened corporal punishment if she did not comply. Coleman told the court that the rules required her to address her children as “Sir” and “Madam”, “so I could understand I was beneath everyone.” During her testimony, Coleman also said her former husband was paranoid about reports of the family in the media. “He was so focused on the fact that world’s eyes were on us … he said we have to look like a happy family,” she said. Coleman told the court that during interviews, Boyle – once an aspiring journalist – attempted to control the narrative of the couple’s time in Afghanistan. “He would give verbal or physical instructions about what could be answered … what story we could tell or what part of captivity we could talk about,” said Coleman. The 19 charges against Boyle are all related to alleged events after the family returned to Canada. Coleman was the alleged victim in 17 of the offences; a publication ban protects the identity of a second alleged victim. The trial is expected to last eight weeks.

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Pound Slides as Parliament Fails to End Brexit Impasse Once More

The failure of May’s last-ditch effort to get her deal through Parliament leaves the U.K. with the choice between crashing out of the European Union without a deal in two weeks and seeking a long extension of its departure date. The British parliament will vote Monday on various alternatives to May’s agreement. Implied volatility on two-week pound-dollar options, which cover the current April 12 deadline for the U.K.’s exit, have surged to the highest level since the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum amid increased anxiety about a no-deal outcome.

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Four killed as thousands protest at border, but Gaza-Israel truce holds

Five rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, prompting Israeli tanks to respond by firing on Hamas military posts early Sunday, hours after a massive Palestinian protest along the border between Israel and Gaza. The rocket attack and Israeli response did not cause any casualties, according to the Israeli army and witnesses in Gaza.

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Ben Shapiro responds to being called 'alt-right' and 'radical' by media

The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro reacts to the media's attacks against him on 'Fox & Friends.'

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10 Ways the 2019 Toyota Tacoma Pickup Lives Up to Its Cult-Like Image

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Investigators believe Boeing anti-stall system was activated in Ethiopian crash: Report

In a preliminary finding, officials investigating the crash of an Ethiopian airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 believe that a flight control feature designed to prevent a stall was activated before the plane nose-dived and crashed, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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Trump blasts Russia probe, calls 2020 Democrats 'radical'

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Presenting himself as both vindicated and vindictive, a fired-up President Donald Trump turned the findings of the Russia investigation into a political weapon at a Michigan rally that was part victory lap, part 2020 campaign push.

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Judge nixes Mexican holiday for executive charged in U.S. college admissions scandal

A federal judge on Friday nixed the international family vacation plans of a former senior executive at private equity firm TPG Capital charged in connection with the U.S. college admissions scandal, saying he posed a flight risk. Bill McGlashan, who prosecutors say was among the wealthy parents who engaged in fraud and bribery schemes to help get their children into colleges, had sought to go ahead with a planned family vacation to Mexico.

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Who is paying for Monsanto's crimes? We are

A US court ordered Monsanto to pay $80m in damages because it hid cancer risks. That’s a small consolation for victims ‘And while Bayer may dole out a few billion dollars in damages, who is really being made to pay?’ Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images The chickens are coming home to roost, as they say in farm country. For the second time in less than eight months a US jury has found that decades of scientific evidence demonstrates a clear cancer connection to Monsanto’s line of top-selling Roundup herbicides, which are used widely by consumers and farmers. Twice now jurors have additionally determined that the company’s own internal records show Monsanto has intentionally manipulated the public record to hide the cancer risks. Both juries found punitive damages were warranted because the company’s cover-up of cancer risks was so egregious. The juries saw evidence that Monsanto has ghost-written scientific papers, tried to silence scientists, scuttled independent government testing and cozied up to regulators for favorable safety reviews of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Even the US district judge Vince Chhabria, who oversaw the San Francisco trial that concluded Wednesday with an $80.2m damage award, had harsh words for Monsanto. Chhabria said there were “large swaths of evidence” showing that the company’s herbicides could cause cancer. He also said there was “a great deal of evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of its product … and does not particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.” Monsanto’s new owner, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, asserts that the juries and judges are wrong; the evidence of a cancer risk is invalid; the evidence of bad corporate conduct is misunderstood and out of context; and that the company will ultimately prevail. Meanwhile, Monsanto critics are celebrating the wins and counting on more as a third trial got underway this week and 11,000 additional plaintiffs await their turn. As well, a growing number of communities and businesses are backing away from use of Monsanto’s herbicides. And investors are punishing Bayer, pushing share prices to a seven-year low on Thursday. Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Tom Claps has warned shareholders to brace for a global settlement of between $2.5bn and $4.5bn. “We don’t believe [Monsanto] will lose every single trial, but we do believe that they could lose a significant majority,” he told the Guardian. Following the recent courtroom victories, some have cheered the notion that Monsanto is finally being made to pay for alleged wrongdoing. But by selling to Bayer last summer for $63bn just before the Roundup cancer lawsuits started going to trial, Monsanto executives were able to walk away from the legal mess with riches. The Monsanto chairman Hugh Grant’s exit package allowed him to pocket $32m, for instance. Amid the uproar of the courtroom scuffles, a larger issue looms: Monsanto’s push to make use of glyphosate herbicides so pervasive that traces are commonly found in our food and even our bodily fluids, is just one example of how several corporate giants are creating lasting human health and environmental woes around the world. Monsanto and its brethren have targeted farmers in particular as a critical market for their herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, and now many farmers around the world believe they cannot farm without them. Studies show that along with promoting illness and disease in people, these pesticides pushed by Bayer and Monsanto, DowDuPont and other corporate players, are endangering wildlife, soil health, water quality and the long-term sustainability of food production. Yet regulators have allowed these corporations to combine forces, making them ever more powerful and more able to direct public policies that favor their interests. The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren this week called for taking back some of that power. She announced on Wednesday a plan to break up big agribusinesses and work against the type of corporate capture of Washington we have seen in recent years. It’s a solid step in the right direction. But it cannot undo the suffering of cancer victims, nor easily transform a deeply contaminated landscape to create a healthier future and unleash us from the chains of a pesticide-dependent agricultural system. And while Bayer may dole out a few billion dollars in damages, who is really being made to pay? We all are. Carey Gillam is a journalist and author, and a public interest researcher for US Right to Know, a not-for-profit food industry research group