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How Sunrise police make millions selling drugs | Sun Sentinel“Police in this suburban town best known for its sprawling outlet mall have hit upon a surefire way to make millions. They sell cocaine.” How safe are Indiana day cares? | Indianapolis Star“Indiana spends about $2.5 million inspecting and licensing more than 4,000 day cares that…
Read MoreTIF 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 MoreOregon 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 MoreWe 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 MoreThe 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 MoreBy 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 MoreThe 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 MoreFour 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 MoreCounty 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 More“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?”
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