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An extensive series by The Los Angeles Times details the war on drugs underway in Mexico. Since January 2007, it is estimated that 6,285 people have died in the efforts to curb the drug trade — a number greater than the total U.S. fatalities in the Iraq War. The series explores the war as it…
Read MoreHolly Whisenhunt Stephen was the best executive producer an investigative reporter could ever ask for. Holly, an award-winning journalist and a longtime IRE member, died Nov. 28 after a long battle with cancer. She was 38. Holly spent much of her career in Texas, working for TV newsrooms in Stephenville, Waco, Austin, Houston and San…
Read MoreA report by David Barstow of The New York Times reveals how Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general, has parlayed his stature and influence into lucrative opportunities, including a consultancy for a military contractor interested in supplying forces in Iraq with armored vehicles. Since 9/11, McCaffrey has “made nearly 1,000 appearances on NBC and…
Read MoreWilliam Booth of The Washington Post reports that journalists are finding themselves at increased risk as violence escalates in Mexico’s drug war. On November 13, Armando Rodríguez, a reporter for El Diario in Ciudad Juarez, was murdered in front of his home. Earlier in the month, the decapitated head of a drug dealer was placed…
Read MoreUSA TODAY looked at the majors of more than 9,000 junior and senior athletes in football, baseball, softball, and men’s and women’s basketball and found high rates of concentrations of athletes in certain majors at 83% of schools. Some schools had several “clusters” and more than half of the clusters are what some analysts refer…
Read MoreSteve 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 MoreAs 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 MoreOklahoma 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 MoreClark 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…
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