The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "pools" ...
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A Damaged District
For more than a year, Zahira Torres overcame obstacle after obstacle to document one of the worst school cheating scandals in the nation's history. Where other cheating scandals involved altering accountability tests, the El Paso Independent School District gamed the state and federal accountability systems by targeting Mexican immigrant students. In a number of cases, district officials refused to enroll students or pushed out students already enrolled -- denying countless students their constitutional right to an education. In other cases, they arbitrarily reclassified grade levels or altered transcripts, all in an attempt to keep students out of the testing pool. Torres' reporting sparked numerous results. The superintendent who masterminded the scheme went to federal prison. The state education agency removed the school board. And when Torres' reporting documented that the state was aware of details of the cheating in 2010 and cleared the district anyway, the new education commissioner ordered an independent investigation of how the agency missed the cheating.
Tags: schools; scandals; education; school board
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Suicide By Cop
Documenting the story of how a veteran from Iraq, suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, terrorizes a store full of customers and then proceeds to lead police from four counties on a high-speed car chase across North Dakota.
Tags: veteran; ptsd; iraq; hostage; mental breakdown
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Poisoned Places: Tonawanda
It's difficult to definitively link any one person's illness to air pollution from a particular plant. But the concerns about the health effects of Tonawanda Coke's toxic pollution rallied a small group of people in Tonawanda -- most of them sick -- to force complacent regulators to clean up the air. The case highlights the risks posed to communities around the country by an environmental regulatory system that largely entrusts companies to voluntarily disclose how much toxic pollution they emit and that can take years to act once violations are discovered.
Tags: air pollution; toxic emission; Tonawanda; Coke; health effects;
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Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
This partnered investigation looks into the Clean Air Act and what it has been failing to do: protecting communities from toxic air pollutants for 21 years.
Tags: EPA; Clean Air Act; air pollution
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Post Mortem: Death Investigation in America
"This series focused on the nation's death investigation system, the more than 2,300 coroner and medical examiner offices responsible for probing sudden and suspicious fatalities. They found a profession plagued by a widespread lack of resources, a lack of national standards or regulation, and a drastic shortage of qualified doctors."
Tags: post mortem investigation; coroners; medical examiners; broadcast
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Drowning in Neglect
KHOU-TV discovers 1300 public swimming pools in Houston were getting a free pass for not meeting safety standards. City health inspectors failed to give violations for substandard drain covers, missing life preservers and emergency phones, and even a lack of chlorine. Health experts claim the condition of many of these pools invites the spread of disease and should warrant closure of the pool.
Tags: pools; safety; health inspection; chlorine; swimming
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Home or Nursing Home: America's Empty Promise to Give the Elderly and Disabled a Choice
"A new legal right gives the elderly and young people with disabilities in the Medicaid program the right to get their long-term health care at home, not in a nursing home. But the NPR investigation found that thise new right to choose one's care at home is largely denied to those who want it."
Tags: nursing home; elder care; disabled; long-term care; medical care; community-based care; Department of Health and Human Services; American with Disabilities Act; Olmstead Decision
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Who's Watching Your Kids
Several lifeguards hired by the City of Memphis to work its pools were convicted criminals. The city hadn't conducted pre-employment background checks on "temporary employees" prior to 2007.
Tags: criminal past; felony; firearm; endangerment; job application; swimming pool; recreation;
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Way Ahead of the Curve
This is a series of three stories by senior writer David Evans that ran in the February, July and November issues of Bloomberg Markets magazine. In "The Risk Nightmare," (July 2008), Evans pierced the opacity and complexity of credit default swaps, unregulated securities that were supposed to act as a form of insurance and protect investors against risk. He found that CDS had built up so many interconnections that one player could jeopardize the entire financial system. In "Banks on the Edge" (November 2008), Evans reported that scores of regional banks across the U.S. would fail within a year because they hadn't yet realized their losses on defaulting mortgages. In "Peddling Tainted Debt to Florida," (February 2008), he reported that Lehman Brothers was both advising and selling toxic debt to Florida's "money market pool." This disclosure prompted a run on the pool, and it was then shut down as the state investigated its holding and worked to restore its creditworthiness.
Tags: Lehman Brothers; Bear Stearns; Florida; Charlie Crist; bank collapse; Wells Fargo; Washington Mutual; bailout
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The Last Ghost of War
"Over three decades after the Vietnam War, deadly dioxin has worked its way into the food chain and, some argue, the gene pool, with tragic results." This documentary details several plaintiffs in a class action suit, who are "seeking justice and compensation for medical care from U.S. chemical companies."
Tags: disabled children; Agent Orange; chemical weapons; dioxin; Saigon