Taken for a Ride: Temp Agencies and ‘Raiteros’ in Immigrant Chicago | ProPublica and Marketplace
“Some of America's best-known companies and largest temp agencies benefit from — and tacitly collaborate with — an underworld of labor brokers, known as raiteros, who charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage.”

Problems keep proliferating at discredited private foster care agency | Los Angeles Times
“A decade after L.A. County auditors delivered a harsh assessment of Teens Happy Homes, probe finds that children were repeatedly harmed in recent years and dubious financial practices grew.”

Mortgage Mess | NBC Bay Area
“Tens of thousands of Bay ...

An analysis by The Record/NorthJersey.com has found that, "in a striking reversal, growing numbers of young parents are choosing the bustle of New York City over the calm of suburban life as a place to live, a trend that is already changing the face of some neighborhoods across North Jersey and could have long-term implications for schools, the housing market and beyond."

According to an investigation by the Springfield News-Leader, the fire alarms in  apartments in Wheaton, Mo., for low-income residents where four adults and a child died in a Thanksgiving Day fire were disabled a decade ago by the company that manages the apartments. The company, Bell Management, Inc., of Joplin manages about 3,700 apartments in three states. The company president said Bell Management has disabled fire alarms at other apartments it manages but wouldn't say how many of the apartments lack working fire alarms or where they are. The apartments in Wheaton, Mo, did have working smoke detectors ...

The Seattle Times
Glamour Beasts: The Dark Side of Elephant Captivity
“Zoos' efforts to preserve and propagate elephants have largely failed, both in Seattle and nationally. The infant-mortality rate for elephants in zoos is almost triple the rate in the wild.”

Food and Environment Reporting Network
Fracking our food supply
“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 ...

The Indianapolis Star
Star Watch Investigation: Vectren's costly coal deal is a profit for company, pain for ratepayers
“At a time when coal prices were at record highs, Vectren locked into expensive, multiyear agreements to buy almost all of its coal supply from its own wholly-owned mining subsidiary, Vectren Fuels. And ratepayers paid the price. Experts say Vectren disregarded the common industry practice of staggering its coal purchases through shorter-term contracts to hedge against unusually high prices.”

The Salt Lake Tribune
Utah Highway Patrol discipline problems go beyond Lisa Steed
“While the case of Cpl. Lisa Steed, the one-time ...

"Lenders have taken over hundreds of thousands of north Georgia homes because the owners couldn't pay, but a Channel 2 Action News investigation exposed some of those same banks have skipped out on millions of tax dollars owed to local counties."

Welcome to IRE's 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.

NBC Dallas-Fort Worth
CDC says is recommended ariel spraying weeks before planes launched
"Was Dallas County's health commissioner slow to react to a key piece of advice ...

"A joint investigation by the News Sentinel and its sister E.W. Scripps newspaper in Memphis, The Commercial Appeal, found that developers, industry, golf courses and many other savvy property owners across Tennessee are reaping dramatic tax savings — often paying pennies on the dollar — because a 1976 law to prevent farmers from being taxed off their land is full of loopholes and timidly enforced by many of the state's 95 assessors."

"Officials of oil-rich Azerbaijan, including members of the Aliyev ruling family, have established companies in Prague, bought land, and built hotels and luxury villas most of them focused around in the famous spa city of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad).

The problem is that some of these investments are illegal.

The full extent of their investment became clear after reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) examined the Czech property and company records of prominent Azeris.  The political elite, it appears, has been playing a real life game of Monopoly in a race to acquire properties in the heart ...

Chesapeake Energy has become the principal player in the largest land boom in America since the 1850s California Gold Rush, amassing acreage positions that rival those of any U.S. energy company. Its strategy is clearly spelled out in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: “We believed that the winner of these land grabs would enjoy competitive advantages for decades to come.” Chesapeake isn’t nearly as transparent about its methods, however. Reuters reviewed hundreds of internal Chesapeake emails, thousands of pages of documents and dozens of lawsuits in seven states, and interviewed contractors who cut ...