In 2002, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors launched Sunshine Sunday, an initiative designed to compel Florida lawmakers to keep public records accessible – and open to everyone.  The success of Sunshine Sunday quickly caught on and, under the auspices of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, became Sunshine Week, marked in the middle of each March. During the observance,...

What was once the exclusive domain of natural health practitioners espousing the benefits of probiotics to the converted is about to become as mainstream as frozen veggie burgers and protein drinks – and produced, promoted and sold by some familiar corporate names. Over the last seven years, about $500 million has been invested in basic research on the workings of...

Buzzback.com, the online marketing and survey company, provided some new data on food-purchasing preferences of millennials. Summed up simply: “Gen Yers are particularly interested in experimenting with food, creating experiences around dining, and sharing the occasion with others.” The Buzzback study also found that nutritional claims made by manufacturers influence consumption less than the leading factor, taste. This research also...

Health-information sites are among the most popular on the Internet worldwide but, when it comes to privacy, they’re also among the most vulnerable to the silent intrusion of data tracking. Analyzing 80,000 Web pages at health-related sites, Timothy Libert, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, found that 91 percent of them siphoned information about...

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a man I greatly admire for his courage, intelligence and deep insights was recently honored in Mexico at the annual awards conference of the Club De Periodistas De Mexico with the International Award For Excellence In Journalism. His brilliant speech, emphasizing the fading role of truth in contemporary journalism, is reprinted here with his...

The Trends Research Institute’s Occupy Peace rally, which will unveil a strategy for individuals and groups to advance peace in their communities across the country, is being rescheduled from May 2 to September 20 — the day before peace is celebrated worldwide. Rescheduling the event positions the institute to stage its unique rally and movement while the globe’s attention shifts, albeit...

It long has been the position of the Trends Research Institute that marijuana should not be legalized — but rather decriminalized. Legalizing marijuana would, in effect, create an industry that would enable government’s long regulative arm to reach into and, eventually, play party favorites with Big Pharma and other established mainstream companies. The neighborhood “pot-eries” you keep reading about in...

If you dream of eternal life, meet Eterni.me – a pioneer online company offering a form of immortality. The website will collect everything about you – photos, Facebook pages, your tweets, emails, poems, letters to the editor, and anything else that can be digitized. Using a proprietary complex of artificial-intelligence algorithms, the Eterni team creates a virtual you, including an...

In the state of Washington, electricity is cheap – so cheap that many homeowners wouldn’t bother to put solar panels on their roof to generate electricity without the state’s sales-tax exemption and incentive payments of up to 36 cents for each kilowatt hour of electricity a home produces. To thwart complaints of “government giveaway,” the nonprofit group Solar Washington has...