The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough investigated the fall of Bear Stearns. Through internal accounts of the investment bank’s demise, some suggest that an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission would point to evidence that Bear was the victim of short-sellers who make bets that a firm’s stock will go down. Burrough’s investigation found that many…
Read MoreMarisol Bello of USA TODAY reported that billions of dollars will be needed to repair deficient bridges throughout the U.S. Twelve percent of the bridges throughout the U.S. currently rate as deficient. “It would cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies in the USA, according to the latest estimate,…
Read MoreAn article by Washington Post reporter Matthew Mosk revealed that the oil industry made large contributions to the McCain campaign in June following his policy statement calling for an end to the federal ban on offshore drilling. “Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which…
Read MoreUsing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, Kristi Piehl, Nicole Muehlhausen and Mike Maybay of KSTP evaluated the housing market in Minnesota. They analyzed 16 years of data to see how the mortgage crisis has impacted the state. In some counties, foreclosure rates have increased by over 400 percent over the last three years. Interactive…
Read MoreGeoff Dutton and Mike Wagner, of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, report that DNA results recently returned show that Robert McClendon, an Ohio inmate who has served 18 years for rape, is not a match for the semen found on the underwear of the 10-year-old victim. “McClendon’s case was highlighted in ‘Test of Convictions,’ a five-day…
Read MoreChinese officials are offering “hush money” to families who lost children in the May 12 earthquake, reports Edward Wong of The New York Times. “Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more…
Read MoreNigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week reported that Craig Berkman, a former Oregon Republican Party chairman, was found in a civil lawsuit to have defrauded some of Portland’s wealthiest investors out of millions of dollars and was ordered to repay $28 million. Despite the lawsuit and ailing personal finances, Berkman continued to give generous political contributions…
Read MoreI am proud to announce that purchases of datasets completely online, without the use of a phone or fax machine, is now available to members for most of the data we sell at the NICAR Database Library. The new online store can be found via links on our main site at www.ire.org, or you can…
Read MoreAn investigation by the Rocky Mountain News examined the federal program to compensate the people who became sick building the nation’s nuclear weapons. The paper found that the agencies running the program, the U.S. Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services, have derailed aid to workers by keeping reports secret from…
Read MoreJason Felch and Maura Dolan of The Los Angeles Times reported on findings that raised questions about the reliability of DNA testing to identify suspects. An Arizona state lab analyst found several instances where people shared several of the 13 markers used to distinguish individuals, findings that defied the odds estimated by the FBI. “As…
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