The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Extra Extra
Rig lacked effective oversight
“New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were…
Read MoreAssemblyman cashes in on disability pension
Mark Lagerkvist launches New Jersey Watchdog with an investigation of a state assemblyman who collected $570,000 in disability payments after retiring as a police officer with a bad back at age 31. Assemblyman David Rible, now 42, competes in five-mile runs, dances as a celebrity and hauls trash to the curb. In addition to his…
Read MoreLoophole keeps gun dealer in business
From almost the time it opened, a Wisconsin gun store has been in trouble with federal authorities. After repeated warnings about problems, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revoked the store’s license in 2007. But as Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Diedrich reported, three years later the case is tied up in…
Read MoreData shows little violence at U.S.-Mexican border
The Associated Press reported that the US-Mexico border is one of the safest parts of America, and getting safer even as politicians say more federal troops are needed to fight rising violence. The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are all in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El…
Read MoreSafety of rig had been a concern for months
Ian Urbina, of The New York Times, reports that internal documents from BP showed that “there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week. The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the…
Read MoreFeds investigate possible billing fraud at Texas medical school, hospital
The Dallas Morning News’ Reese Dunklin and Miles Moffeit reported that a Dallas medical school and its teaching hospital are under federal investigation in possible Medicare and Medicaid fraud, billing for patient services that doctors didn’t provide. It is the second time in less than a week that allegations of billing fraud hit the two…
Read MoreDoctor’s role in pharmaceutical study questioned
An investigation by John Fauber, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, found that when doctors sign off on research about powerful new drugs, they may be doing so based on data provided them by drug companies – not the raw data that underlies the studies themselves. Fauber looked at the case of Multaq, a drug for…
Read MoreBP chose riskier option to seal Deepwater Horizon well
Ian Urbina, of The New York Times, reports that a BP document provide to the paper by a Congressional investigator reveals that BP officials chose “to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options.” The selected casing only had a single seal, and if cement…
Read MoreRV park investment leaves seniors penniless
A News-Press (Fort Meyers, Fla.) investigation found hundreds of senior citizens who invested more than $7 million with a Florida RV park and campground owner. The securities were unregistered and when investors complained to authorities, they were bounced from one agency to the next without any agency taking responsibility to investigate. The owner has declared…
Read More24-plus hour days billed by home health workers
Glenn Howatt and Pam Louwagie of the Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minn.) revealed that the state paid a home health care worker who billed for three 32 hour work days. The Star Tribune investigation found that in at least 21 cases last summer, “the state Department of Human Services paid agencies where care attendants supposedly worked…
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