Archive for the ‘CAR’ Category

Loophole in Hawaii’s pay-to-play law exploited by donors

An investigation by the Honolulu Advertiser found that donors linked to city and state contractors are giving money to candidates for Hawaii’s gubernatorial races.

Parolees clustered in a handful of communities in Utah

An investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune found clustering of probationers and parolees “in specific neighborhoods and even apartment buildings, despite rules prohibiting people on supervision from associating with one another. Law enforcement and scholars say offenders are more likely to succeed if they are dispersed, but a lack of halfway houses and city ordinances [...]

Tracking gang activity in Tennessee

The Tennessean’s three-part series on gangs reveals a growing problem across the state, particularly in suburbia and small towns. Law enforcement is overwhelmed and schools are ripe recruiting grounds in what’s part of a national trend of gangs expanding their influence to areas outside the urban core to sell drugs.

Unintended acceleration problems not just limited to Toyota

The dangerous problem of cars accelerating without a driver’s input has put Toyota in the headlines – and brought the car maker’s executives to congressional hearings. But an NPR News Investigation by Robert Benincasa found that unintended acceleration is not limited to Toyota. It is actually a problem found throughout the auto industry.

Despite fatalities, many police officers fail to wear seat belts

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found dozens of police officers across the country have died in car crashes while unbuckled — at least 64 between 2004 and 2008 alone.

Prescription drugs linked to seventy percent of Milwaukee overdoses

In an analysis of prescription drug deaths in the Milwaukee area, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Kertscher found of the 1,200 overdose deaths in an eight-year period, some 70% involved prescription drugs.

Database of dangerous caregivers incomplete

Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein of ProPublica reported on big gaps in a federal database that is supposed to alert hospitals to disciplinary actions against health care providers across the country.  Over two decades ago, Congress “ordered up a national database allowing hospitals to check for disciplinary actions taken anywhere in the country against nurses, [...]

Cheating on standardized tests suspected in one in five Georgia schools

Hundreds of Georgia schools are under investigation for cheating on state standardized tests. This week’s release of a state probe of erasure marks followed more than a year of stories by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and data analyst John Perry about suspect test scores.

Blacks three times more likely to be stopped in Toronto

Race Matters, a series by The Toronto Star, investigated why blacks are three times more likely than white to be stopped and questioned by police. “In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.”

Many children lack second dose of H1N1 flu vaccine

As many as 80% of children in some states who received a first dose of H1N1 vaccine haven’t received a booster dose that’s necessary to fully protect them from swine flu, according to a USA Today review of immunization registry data from 10 states.