The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Posts by hdcoadmin
City gives felon six figure grant to open liquor store
TIF rules prohibit liquor stores from getting small business grants, and state and local laws bar felons from holding a stake in a liquor store except under rare circumstances, the Chicago Tribune reported. But a new outlet was funded and approved by City Hall agencies that exercised little oversight. The new liquor store was bankrolled…
Read MoreSex offenders in Oregon: State fails to track hundreds
Oregon has some of the worst records in the country at following federal standards intended to thwart roaming sex offenders, the Oregonian reports. It has become a haven for offenders who want to escape much stricter rules in other states. The state is two years behind entering names into its electronic database of registered sex…
Read MoreTracking what data are available and where during the government shutdown
We reported yesterday that many government agencies had shut off access to their online data services, and that the NICAR database library was a good source for finding government data during the shutdown. Poynter today has an interesting post on the challenges the shutdown has caused for data journalists. If you want more background, the…
Read More‘They Ordered Us To Kill All The People’
The trial of commanding officer Lt. Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes began last week, ProPublic reports. It is the first trial in the United States involving an atrocity from Guatemala’s 30-year civil war. It is also the first full airing of the Dos Erres case in a U.S. court. Sosa played a lead role in one of the…
Read MoreReporter finds hundreds of unpunished water violations in Minnesota
By Mark Steil, Minnesota Public Radio I’ve always enjoyed looking through large piles of data in my job as a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. My primary beats are the agriculture and energy sectors. I’ve been on the job 35 years now, and for most of that time a document hunt generally meant one thing:…
Read MoreIRE to keep Data Library OPEN during Government Shutdown
The government has shut down; national parks and museums are closed. Some million federal workers stayed home. Even some government data portals, such as data.gov and census.gov, have been shuttered. But don’t fret. The NICAR database library provides access to dozens of government databases at a time when federal agencies across the world wide web…
Read MoreIRE members win Barlett and Steele Awards from Reynolds Center
Four IRE members were among journalists honored in the seventh annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism, announced today by the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Business Journalism. The awards are named for the investigative team of Don Barlett and James Steele, they are funded by the Reynolds Center and celebrate the best…
Read MoreWaste Land: Frio County Struggles with Fracking’s Leftovers
County officials estimate there’s been a 756 percent increase in the amount of fracking waste brought to Frio County since 2010 and that this year alone will see an estimated 351,720 truck trips because of it.
Read MoreStimulus Funds Paid For Trees For Wealthy Homeowners
“Stimulus funds aimed at jump starting the economy paid for about 4,000 trees in Denver, with many ending up at million dollar homes in Denver’s priciest neighborhoods where residents acknowledge they could have paid for their own trees, but the government was giving them out for free, so why bother?”
Read MoreRevealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’
Dozens of Nepalese migrant laborers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labor abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.
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