The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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U.S. has approved billions in business with blacklisted countries
Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by Jo Becker of The New York Times has found. Nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving such countries…
Read MoreAs deportations from county jails increase, some avoid criminal prosecutions
As the number of deportations from county jails increases across the country and in central Ohio, local authorities are struggling to deal with the fallout, a year-long examination by the The Columbus Dispatch found. In a communication mixup, ICE agents deported a witness in a murder trial before he could testify. The accused, a US…
Read MoreWith little regulation online education can be costly
An investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting shows how high school diplomas received online can be a waste of money and not recognized as valid. According to the report although dozens of organizations accredit schools, “the U.S. higher education community at large only recognizes a handful of accrediting organizations as legitimate.” With little regulation in…
Read MoreDeepwater Horizon’s final hours
An investigation by The New York Times details the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Based on interviews with crew members and sworn testimonies, the Times was able to piece together what happened during the final hours of this disaster. “What emerges is a stark and singular fact: crew members died and suffered…
Read MoreBehind the foreclosure crisis in three U.S. cities
To answer nagging questions about the foreclosure crisis, Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica and Sanjay Bhatt of The Seattle Times built a database based on a random sample of some 1,200 foreclosure filings from the central county of three metro areas — Seattle, Phoenix and Baltimore. Their findings challenge some of the conventional wisdom about the…
Read MoreGun stores remain open due to ineffective laws
Hobbled by Congress, federal watchdogs rarely revoke the licenses of lawbreaking gun dealers. And when they do, stores can easily beat the system by having a relative, friend or employee pull a fresh license – something that routinely happens across the country, a Journal Sentinel investigation by reporters John Diedrich and Ben Poston has found.…
Read MoreProperty insurance system puts Floridians at risk
Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter Paige St. John spent the past year investigating Florida’s property insurance crisis. Her work exposed companies that continued to sell policies when they had no way to pay claims and revealed company owners who demanded rate hikes while secretly siphoning profits from their struggling businesses. The series also revealed how insurers and…
Read MoreFive years later, cleanup at Ringwood still unfinished
Journalists for The Record of northern New Jersey have revisited the site of the paper’s “Toxic Legacy” series five years ago and found that the clean-up of a former Ford Motor Co. dump in environmentally sensitive woodlands remains incomplete. The original series prompted the EPA to take the unprecedented step of re-listing the tract as…
Read MoreElder placement agencies cash in
Michael Berens, of The Seattle Times, uncovered the hidden cost of elder placement agencies that promise to match seniors to long-term care facilities – for free. Elder placement is a national multi-million dollar industry with no rules and zero oversight. Seniors are steered only to facilities that agree to pay hefty commissions. Most placement companies…
Read MoreSafety of crib bumpers called into question
An investigation by Ellen Gabler of the Chicago Tribune has prompted the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to review the safety of crib bumpers, which are popular baby products sold in stores throughout the country. The Tribune found that while the safety commission acknowledged it has gotten more than two dozen reports of infant deaths…
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