The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Business
Mercury in seafood at unsafe levels
Sam Roe and Michael Hawthorne of the Chicago Tribune published a three-part series on the presence of mercury in fish sold in supermarkets. “In one of the nation’s most comprehensive studies of mercury in commercial fish, testing by the newspaper showed that a variety of popular seafood was so tainted that federal regulators could confiscate…
Read MoreGulf Coast homeowner loans lagging
Leslie Eaton and Ron Nixon of The New York Times used federal data to show the pace of homeowner loans in the Gulf Coast is lagging. “The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government’s main disaster recovery program for both businesses and homeowners, has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications…
Read MoreSmoking bans not affecting businesses
Jason Hoppin and MaryJo Sylwester of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press analyzed Minnesota Department of Revenue data on taxable sales at establishments that sell alcohol to see if there was any evidence of widespread economic hardship due to smoking bans that were enacted in some areas of the Twin Cities on March 31. Because tax…
Read MoreData on European farm subsidy payments made available
Farmsubsidy.org is a project coordinated by the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting (DICAR) and EU Transparency, a nonprofit organization in the United Kingdom. The Web site obtains detailed data relating to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in every EU member state and makes this data available to European citizens. Subsidies paid to farmers…
Read MoreD.C. officials violate spending laws
Dan Keating and David S. Fallis, with contributions from Bobbye Pratt, of The Washington Post used District of Columbia purchasing records to show that of $2.5 billion in purchases last year, the city spent roughly $425 million in unauthorized payments and no-bid contracts. "District officials routinely violate city spending laws by avoiding competitive bidding, masking…
Read MoreKy. economic incentives fall short
A series of Lexington Herald-Leader reports from John Stamper and Bill Estep, with contributions from Linda J. Johnson, computer-assisted reporting coordinator, reporter Linda Blackford and news researcher Lu-Ann Farrar, examines Kentucky’s expensive efforts to recruit industries and failures in the program. “Instead, at a cost of $1.8 billion, Kentucky’s main economic-incentive programs have overburdened taxpayers…
Read More‘Guest workers’ suffer from exploitation, neglect
A nine-month investigation by Tom Knudson and Hector Amezcua of The Sacramento Bee “has found pineros [Latino forest workers in the United States] are victims of employer exploitation, government neglect and a contracting system that insulates landowners — including the U.S. government — from responsibility.” The report, “based on more than 150 interviews across Mexico,…
Read MoreMortgage fraud surges in Chicago
David Jackson, with contributions from Ray Gibson, Todd Lighty and John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, reviewed thousands of pages of land and court records and interviewed more than 100 people to show that a white-collar crime wave is raking Chicago’s poorest communities, robbing vulnerable families of their homes and draining billions of dollars from…
Read MoreCalif. conservators profit from vulnerable seniors
Evelyn Larrubia, Jack Leonard and Robin Fields of the Los Angeles Times examined records of more than 2,400 cases handled by California’s professional conservators since 1997 to produce a detailed four-part series on the state’s failure to protect its senior citizens from those hired to handle their affairs. More than 500 seniors were entrusted to…
Read MoreFlawed homes go unrepaired in hurricane-prone area
Mc Nelly Torres of South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that, despite an engineer’s independent study showing workmanship and materials that did not meet standards in a hurricane-prone area, homeowners have been waiting 10 years for their homes to be fixed. Torres reviewed hundreds of records, including a grand jury report, two independent studies, and other construction-related…
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