"Even as more than 800,000 novelty helmets are sold in the U.S. every year, and as motorcycle crash deaths mount, federal regulators have never acted with urgency to crack down on the popular but flawed headgear. Proposals to limit sales of the novelty helmets have been delayed over and over again," according to Fair Warning's investigation.

"Lax federal oversight dating back years allowed lenders to repeatedly make bad loans to small businesses under a government program that has cost taxpayers $1.3 billion since 2000 on defaulted loans, a Dayton Daily News investigation found." Read the Daily News's investigation here.

"The Indiana agency charged with keeping workplaces safe performs far fewer inspections than in the past, issues fewer serious violations and in recent years has struggled with employee turnover. Created in the 1970s as a state-run offshoot of a similar federal agency, the current Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a dramatically changed – and some say underfunded – agency."

"The Kansas City Star, in a yearlong investigation, found that the beef industry is increasingly relying on a mechanical process to tenderize meat, exposing Americans to higher risk of E. coli poisoning. The industry then resists labeling such products, leaving consumers in the dark. The result: Beef in America is plentiful and affordable, spun out in enormous quantities at high speeds, but it's a bonanza with hidden dangers. Industry officials contend beef is safer than it's ever been."

An investigation by the FERN found that, “In Pennsylvania, the oil and gas industry is already on a tear—drilling thousands of feet into ancient seabeds, then repeatedly fracturing (or “fracking”) these wells with millions of gallons of highly pressurized, chemically laced water, which shatters the surrounding shale and releases fossil fuels. New York, meanwhile, is on its own natural-resource tear, with hundreds of newly opened breweries, wineries, organic dairies and pastured livestock operations—all of them capitalizing on the metropolitan area’s hunger to localize its diet. But there’s growing evidence that these two impulses, toward energy and ...

“The average amount of time it takes to resolve pothole complaints is on the rise on the streets of Pittsburgh, according to a PublicSource analysis of 25,000 pothole complaints from Pittsburgh’s 311 center between 2006 and 2012.”

“Data compiled by the consumer agency from death certificates and hospital emergency room visits from 2003 through May 2012 shows that 150 mostly older adults died after they became trapped in bed rails. Over nearly the same time period, 36,000 mostly older adults — about 4,000 a year — were treated in emergency rooms with bed rail injuries. Officials at the F.D.A. and the commission said the data probably understated the problem since bed rails are not always listed as a cause of death by nursing homes and coroners, or as a cause of injury by emergency room ...

"Imagine getting on an elevator and dropping eight floors, crashing into the basement.  It happened to one woman. What started as a routine elevator ride at her government job ended in what she calls a nightmare.Her accident sparked a FOX 5 I-team investigation and the discovery of repeated shut downs and entrapments."

IRE is introducing a roundup of the weekend’s many enterprise stories from around the country. We’ll highlight the document digging, field work and data analysis that made their way into centerpieces in print, broadcast and online from coast to coast.

Did we miss some? Let us know.  Send us an email at web@ire.org or tweet to @IRE_NICAR. We’ll add it to the list and spread the word.

Dayton Daily News
OSU president expenses in the millions

Daily News reporter Laura A. Bischoff fought a year-long FOIA battle to get hold of Ohio State University President ...

The Detroit Free Press has found that four decades after an agricultural disaster allowed the chemical polybrominated biphenyl into the food and water of nine out of 10 Michigan residents –as the state scales back monitoring of the sites and the Environmental Protection Agency gears for a multi-million dollar cleanup, many of the health risks have lingered.