Posts by hdcoadmin
India: Driven to compete
Steve Eder of The Toledo Blade reports that the embattled U.S. auto industry is facing yet another threat — India. In a three-part series, The Blade shows how India’s automakers are ramping up plans to sell their cars globally. The project, which included interviews with auto executives, parts suppliers, engineers, politicians and peasants in India’s…
Read MoreMapping, interactively
As IRE has grown and evolved, so have the services offered to our members. Just a few years ago, one of the most common requests of our Database Library was a conversion of electronic information from tape to disc. Nowadays, Database Library staffers are working with open-source database technology, Web scraping and dynamic mapping. Recently …
Read MoreObama found support in Oklahoma’s urban precincts
Oklahoma voters gave Republican Sen. John McCain one of his largest margins of victory over Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election earlier this month. But an analysis of precinct results from across the state by The Oklahoman shows Obama claiming heavily populated urban areas and pockets of support in eastern Oklahoma. McCain outpolled Obama…
Read MoreState-run home for disabled hired unlicensed medical directors
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 MoreU.S flex-fuel fleet fraught with problems
A 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 MoreUnapproved prescription drugs covered by Medicaid
An 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 MoreThe taking of NASA’s secrets
BusinessWeek’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 MoreEnforcement of vaccination law lax at day cares
Following 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 MoreSoldiers say they were ordered to shred sensitive files
In 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 MoreNYU campus crime reports are misleading
A 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 More