International
“Lead Astray”
In a piece for MotherJones, CIR correspondents Sara Shipley Hiles and Marina Walker Guevara reveal how the St. Louis-based firm, Doe Run, expanded its operations abroad at a time when it was facing increasing scrutiny and regulation in the United States, milking money from its Peruvian operation while claiming it couldn’t afford to finish its…
Read More“Murdering the Messengers”
U.S. News and World Report’s David Kaplan writes about the killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Russian government’s shocking and atrocious lack of response to the execution-style slaying of journalists there. “For those of us in international journalism training, Anna was something of a legend–a relentless investigative reporter who refused to back…
Read MoreFaith and foreign aid
Farah Stockman, Michael Kranish, and Peter S. Canellos of The Boston Globe, with Globe correspondent Kevin Baron, examined the complete database of USAID prime awards from 2001 to 2005, containing more than 52,000 funding actions, to reveal that USAID gave more than $1.7 billion to 159 “faith-based” organizations. The percentage of USAID funds to NGOs…
Read MoreWorkplace safety in Canada
The CBC’s investigative unit obtained data from workplace safety insurance boards across Canada to track top national trends in the workplace of today. “Canada’s record for reducing workplace fatalities over the previous 20 years was the worst. The project looks at health-care workers, mines, fatalities by province, and more. Audio reports are included in the…
Read MorePlanes dangerously close in Canadian skies
Robert Cribb, Fred Vallance-Jones and Tamsin McMahon of The Toronto Star analyzed the aviation data and found that “more than 80,000 passengers have been put at risk over the last five years when airplanes they were travelling in came dangerously close together in Canadian skies.” Between 2001 and mid-2005, there were more than 800 incidents…
Read MoreContractors are invisible casualties in Iraq
Alejandra Fernandez-Morera of the Scripps Howard News Service found there are significant invisible casualties of the Iraqi occupation. Almost 505 civilian contractors have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. “Another 4,744 contractors have been injured, according to insurance claims by 209 companies on file at the Department of Labor.” The investigation found…
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 MorePrice of gold too high for the environment
Lowell Bergman, Jane Perlez, Kirk Johnson with other contributing reporters of the FRONTLINE/World and The New York Times examined the growing conflict between the local people and the Yanacocha Mine in Peru along with tours of gold mines in the American West, Latin America, Africa and Europe to provide a rare look inside an insular…
Read MoreGetty museum had clues it was buying looted pieces
Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino of the Los Angeles Times report the J. Paul Getty Museum, the world’s richest art institution, knew as early as 1985 that “three of their principal suppliers were selling objects that probably had been looted and that the museum continued to buy from them anyway.” The Times obtained Getty documents…
Read MoreLoophole endangers drivers in Canada
Kevin McGran of The Toronto Star used federal and provincial records to show that “if you rent a U-Haul, you’ve got a 50-50 chance of getting a truck that won’t pass a road safety check.” Ontario police failed nearly half of such vehicles during road examinations between 2002 and 2004, and Ministry of Transportation data…
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