The Examination/Washington Post • 3rd April 2024

Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice, despite rising obesity

Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating “health at every size” — urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her “mental hunger.”

Associated Press • 3rd November 2023

How an American meat broker is fueling Amazon deforestation

WASHINGTON (AP) — As incomes in China have grown in the last decade, so has China’s appetite for beef. No longer out of reach for China’s middle class, beef now sizzles in home woks and restaurant kitchens.

The Examination/Washington Post • 13th September 2023

The food industry pays 'influencer’ dietitians to shape your eating habits

As the World Health Organization raised questions this summer about the risks of a popular artificial sweetener, a new hashtag began spreading on the social media accounts of health professionals: #safetyofaspartame.

Mongabay Environmental News • 20th June 2023

Despite billions tied to clean supply chains, China’s Cofco still turns to deforesters

MATO GROSSO, Brazil — João Luiz Lazarotto was indignant. Seated in the corporate office of his 9,520-hectare (23,524-acre) farm in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Lazarotto explained his problem.

The Intercept • 16th December 2022

The Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy Corporations Are Using to Silence Their Critics

Weeks before he was murdered, Victor Hugo Orcasita presented his wife with a letter describing his last wishes.

OCCRP/Miami Herald • 1st November 2021

Nicaraguan Indigenous Leader Who Aligned with Government Reaps Hidden Reward

As a young man, Osorno Cóleman Salomón led indigenous troops into battle against the forces of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega during the country’s brutal civil war.

OCCRP • 1st November 2021

Nicaragua’s Forgotten Deforestation Crisis

President Daniel Ortega is known as a repressive tyrant. But his government’s role in enabling an environmental disaster with far-reaching consequences for the global climate is often ignored.

ICIJ • 21st September 2020

How banks helped Venezuela's 'boligarchs' extract billions

On a rusty gas stove in Selena Ramirez’s apartment, a small flame was glowing. Ramirez, 69, shares the apartment with her daughter and 11-year-old grandson. It is on the ground floor of a government housing complex in San Francisco de Yare, a city in Venezuela about 40 miles south of Caracas.

ICIJ • 25th June 2019

Leak Exposes Millions of Dollars in New Payments In Odebrecht Cash-for-Contracts Scandal

A new investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveals unreported cases and massive public works projects embroiled in Odebrecht’s bribery operation.

ICIJ • 25th March 2019

FDA Kept Hundreds of Thousands of Breast Implant Incidents Hidden From Public

On the eve of a hearing about the hidden dangers of breast implants, the U.S. regulator charged with informing the public about those risks revealed it has long known about vastly more injuries and other complications than it has previously disclosed.

ICIJ • 19th December 2018

How Medical Device Harm is Concealed

The Implant Files identified three critical failures that lead to underreporting of patient harm from implanted devices of all kinds.

ICIJ • 26th November 2018

Breast Implant Injuries Kept Hidden As New Health Threats Surface

Manufacturers fought to get implants back on the market. Regulators gave in. Now thousands of patients are paying the price.

ICIJ • 5th November 2017

Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his Russian business ties

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross benefits from business ties to Putin’s inner circle U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin’s inner circle. Ross, a billionaire private equity investor, divested most of his business assets before joining Presi

The New York Times • 5th November 2017

Commerce Secretary’s Offshore Ties to Putin ‘Cronies’

In addition to Mr. Ross, the files contain references to other members of the Trump administration, including Gary D. Cohn, the chief economic adviser who was associated with 22 Bermuda entities while an executive at Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who was a director of a Bermuda-based joint venture with the government of Yemen when he ran Exxon Mobil’s operations there. There is no evidence of illegality in any of their dealings. Mr. Ross emerges as a particularly value

ICIJ/NBC News • 28th September 2016

Trump’s organization did business with Iranian bank later linked to terrorism

Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program. Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Orga

ICIJ/The Huffington Post • 7th October 2015

How a World Bank Translator Became a Hunted Man

Human rights advocates criticize the bank for failing to speak up about the jailing of a former employee Pastor Omot Agwa knew he was in danger. “Greetings from Ethiopia in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote in an online message to friends and colleagues on March 11, 2015. “I am informing you that since yesterday I have been hunted by security.” The gentle, round-faced church leader had long been an embarrassment to Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime. As a prominent leader of the Anuak

ICIJ/The Huffington Post • 9th June 2015

World Bank’s Business-Lending Arm Backed Palm Oil Producer Amid Deadly Land War

Glenda Chávez stands beside the grave of her father, the preacher Gregorio Chávez, whose body was discovered on Dinant’s Paso Aguán plantation in July 2012. PANAMÁ VILLAGE, Honduras — Glenda Chávez walks between the orange trees of her family’s grove, approaching a low wire fence that divides her property from Corporación Dinant’s Paso Aguán plantation. On Dinant’s side of the fence, rows of spiky palm oil trees stretch for miles across the green landscape of northern Honduras. “Here,” she say

ICIJ/The Huffington Post • 16th April 2015

How the World Bank Broke Its Promise to Protect the Poor

Beneath a gloomy white sky, more than 100 armed police poured into the slum of Badia East in the teeming megacity of Lagos, Nigeria. As they advanced, they cracked their batons on the unpaved streets and against the ramshackle walls of the shanties. “If you love your life, move out!” the officers shouted. Thousands of people grabbed what belongings they could carry and fled. Then a line of hulking excavators moved in, using their hydraulic claws to smash homes into pieces. Within hours, the

Center for Public Integrity • 17th September 2012

As kidney disease kills thousands across continents, scientists scramble for answers

SANDAMALGAMA, Sri Lanka — In this tiny Sri Lankan village, rice farmer Wimal Rajaratna sits cross-legged on a wooden bed, peering out toward lush palm trees that surround his home. Listless and weak, the 46-year old father of two anxiously awaits word on whether his body can accept a kidney donation that offers his only chance of survival. In Uddanam, India, a reed-thin farmer named Laxmi Narayna prepares for the grueling two-day journey he takes twice every week. For most of his 46 years, his

ICIJ • 11th December 2011

Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions

Maudiel Martinez is 19 years old and has a shy smile, a tangle of curly black hair and a lean, muscular build shaped by years of work in the sugarcane fields. For most of his adolescence, he was healthy and strong and spent his days chopping tall stalks of cane with his machete. Now Martinez is suffering from a deadly disease that is devastating his community along with scores of others in Central America, where it has decimated the ranks of sugarcane workers. The same illness killed his father