The Texas Observer reports that the s tate health department left approximately $2.3 million of its family planning funds unspent while clinics across the state closed because of lack of money. As a result, tens of thousands of women lost access to reproductive care. The unspent funds happened at a time when, according to previous Observer reporting, "146 family-planning clinics lost funds, and more than 60 clinics closed as a result following budget cuts instituted by the Texas Legislature in 2011."

"An East Tennessee grandmother said she tried in vain to get the Department of Children’s Services to intervene when she feared her newborn grandson was living in an unsafe environment. DCS already had opened an investigation in March 2012 after the baby was born with symptoms of drug withdrawal. He also was born prematurely with a severe birth defect: the infant’s intestines were outside his body, but he underwent surgery before going home. By June, he was dead at just 9 weeks old. The grandmother’s call for help is not noted in DCS records," according to an ...

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 ...

How the gun lobby has already blocked Boston’s bombing investigators | MSNBC
“One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.”

What BP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill | Newsweek
“What has not been revealed until now is how BP hid that massive amount of oil from TV cameras and the price that this “disappearing act” imposed on cleanup workers, coastal residents, and the ecosystem of the gulf. That story can now be ...

Faltering Courts, Mired in Delays | The New York Times
“The Bronx courts are failing. With criminal cases languishing for years, a plague of delays in the Bronx criminal courts is undermining one of the central ideals of the justice system, the promise of a speedy trial.”

The Curse of Fertilizer | National Geographic Magazine
"Runaway nitrogen is suffocating wildlife in lakes and estuaries, contaminating groundwater, and even warming the globe’s climate. As a hungry world looks ahead to billions more mouths needing nitrogen-rich protein, how much clean water and air will survive our demand for fertile fields?"

Nuclear byproduct levels ...

Buried in Grain | NPR, Center for Public Integrity
“Nearly 180 people — including 18 teenagers — have been killed in grain-related entrapments at federally regulated facilities across 34 states since 1984, records show. Their employers were issued a total of $9.2 million in fines, though regulators later reduced the penalties overall by 59 percent. Read about the incidents here.”

Wired for Waste | Charleston Gazette
“In 2010, West Virginia received a $126 million federal stimulus grant to bring high-speed Internet across the state. The Gazette is scrutinizing the state's stimulus spending in an ongoing series of reports.”

A gulf family’s ...

VG of Norway reports that more than half of kindergartens in Norway have broken the law in the last three years. VG journalists sent hundreds of FOIA requests and analyzed roughly 31,000 pages of audit reports. They found a total of 6,400 violations during that span, including careless hygiene, poor security and failure to meet staffing requirements.

See the full report here. Using DocumentCloud, VG also created a database of the reports.

According to a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a sharp rise in students diagnosed with major disabilities is forcing many Minnesota schools to take difficult and at times divisive new steps to tailor classrooms to the disabled students’ needs, no matter how expensive that gets. Even as overall school enrollment declined over the past decade, the number of disabled students rose 14 percent. Many of the state’s most psychologically troubled students also are being sent to school settings for the first time as mental health programs that once served them have been cut back or eliminated. By law ...

The San Antonio Express-News
Eagle Ford pay is high, but work can be fatal
"Since 2009, at least 11 employees working for drilling companies and spinoff industries in Eagle Ford Shale counties have suffered horrific deaths that could have been prevented, according to OSHA investigations obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

WisconsinWatch
New state law conceals records of abuse, neglect in nursing homes
"Families’ abilities to hold potentially negligent nursing facilities accountable have been diminished by a recent change in state law that bars records of abuse and neglect from use in the courts, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative ...

"This week, the installment by Miles Moffeit discloses how Parkland's medical-school partner acts as a shadow government over clinical affairs, often to the detriment of patients. Few, if any, governmental or industry standards exist nationally to help responsibly manage such hospital-medical school partnerships."

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