Clark Kauffman of the The Des Moines Register reports that a state-run home for profoundly disabled children and adults has employed nine unlicensed psychologists and two successive, unlicensed medical directors. State records show the medical directors — both of whom are gynecologists — were paid a total of $127,424 without either of them ever obtaining…
Read MoreA 16-year long federal program to build a fleet of alternative-fuel vehicles for the government has been riddled with problems, according to a report by Kimberly Kindy and Dan Keating of The Washington Post. “Under a mandate from Congress, federal agencies have gradually increased their fleets of alternative-fuel vehicles, a majority of them ‘flex-fuel,’ capable…
Read MoreAn Associated Press analysis of federal drug data shows the U.S. government has spent over $200 million since 2004 on drugs that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In some instances, these unapproved medications have been linked to deaths. While Medicaid is not supposed to cover unapproved drugs, the FDA does…
Read MoreBusinessWeek’s Keith Epstein and Ben Elgin disclose detailed evidence that hackers and foreign operatives have been penetrating NASA computers for years, robbing the nation’s military and scientific institutions — along with the defense industry that serves them — of secret information on satellites, rocket engines, launch systems, and even the Space Shuttle. As part of…
Read MoreFollowing up on a recent investigation of vaccination enforcement in schools, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that hundreds of local day care centers also routinely violate a state law that prohibits admitting children without required shots. The newspaper also found health officials and child care licensing regulators were confused about what the law actually says and…
Read MoreIn October, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com questioned the U.S. Army’s report attributing the deaths of Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Robert Suarez to enemy action after finding evidence suggesting that the men died from friendly fire. Now three soldiers say they were ordered to shred boxes of documents containing private information about Nelson and Suarez…
Read MoreA report by Marc Beja and Adam Playford of Washington Square News (at New York University) brings to light issues with NYU’s reporting of campus crime statistics. Due to how the school defines campus addresses, only three of NYU’s 21 undergraduate dorms qualify as on-campus. “The tightly confined Clery map covers the buildings immediately around…
Read MoreThis audio snippet comes from the Saturday, Nov. 15, Better Watchdog Workshop in New Haven, Conn., where WTTG-Washington reporter Tisha Thompson shared tips on the art of the interview. When Tisha Thompson of WTTG in Washington, D.C., gets a call from a tipster who’s afraid to leave a name or phone number, she has a…
Read MoreMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger, as part of their ongoing series Chemical Fallout, found that products labeled as “microwave safe” release toxic doses of the chemical bisphenol A when heated. The newspaper had a University of Missouri laboratory test 10 products to see if the chemical bisphenol A leached out of containers when…
Read MoreThe Seattle Times published the first part of a series revealing failures by Washington hospitals to control the spread of drug-resistant staph infections known as MRSA. Washington state hospitals are not obligated to track infection rates, but The Times analysis of millions of documents “revealed 672 previously undisclosed deaths attributable to the infection.” State and…
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