The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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Hmong girls raped, prostituted by gangs
Pam Louwagie and Dan Browning of the Star Tribune report on the growing problem of young Hmong girls who are raped and prostituted by Hmong gangs. A preliminary analysis found that "these girls were six times more likely than other victims to have been raped by five or more males ". The newspaper used an…
Read MoreCity approved slipshod repairs on homes
Mike McGraw and Michael Mansur of The Kansas City Star report that an investigation by The Kansas City Star revealed that the taxpayer-supported home maintenance program overseen by the city’s former housing agency approved of shoddy repair work on homes leading to leaky roofs, sagging ceilings, buckling and poorly repaired foundations and dangerous furnaces and…
Read MoreTough measures keep prisoners behind bars for life
Adam Liptak of The New York Times , examined information about prisoners serving life sentences in all 50 states, finding “that about 132,000 of the nation’s prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison…
Read MoreGenerous deals for Wash. dentists
Michelle Nicolosi of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Washington state’s dental board has been slow to act and has cut generous deals with some of the state’s most complained-about dentists. The P-I investigation found that dentists were allowed to continue working in Washington with little restriction long after they lost licenses in other states, or…
Read MoreHatch leads in money from alcohol interests
Lee Davidson at Salt Lake City's The Deseret Morning News reported that Orrin Hatch, despite being a former Mormon bishop teetotaler, has received more from alcohol interests than any other U.S. Senator this year — and he’s among the top five in money from tobacco interests. The Deseret Morning News also searched Federal Election Commission…
Read MoreCandidate helped defeat ban on gambling
Jim Galloway and Alan Judd of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution report that Ralph Reed, who has vocally condemned gambling as a "cancer on the American body politic," quietly worked five years ago to kill a proposed ban on Internet wagering on behalf of eLottery Inc., a Connecticut-based company in the online gambling industry. The defeated legislation…
Read MoreMaps show campaign contributions in Va.
With the Virginia governor’s race just weeks away, the Virginia Public Access Project used mapping technology to create online dynamic maps of campaign contributions received by Virginia’s statewide candidates. The map shades contributions by county and city, and links to detailed data on individual donors in those localities.
Read MoreDespite crimes, U.S. soldiers immune from punishments in Iraq
Russell Carollo and Larry Kaplow of the Dayton Daily News and Cox News Service used a Pentagon database to show that "dozens of soldiers have been accused of crimes against Iraqis since the first troops deployed for Iraq. But despite strong evidence and convictions in some cases, only a small percentage resulted in punishments nearing…
Read MoreHomes in high-risk areas predate Navy base
Jon W. Glass and David Gulliver of The Virginian-Pilot used city property records to show that " hundreds of homes in the highest-risk areas around Oceana Naval Air Station were built before it became an air base and before Navy flight patterns exposed some neighborhoods to potential jet crashes." A base-closing commission has recommended that…
Read MoreSacramento nursing homes fail to meet minimum standards
Phillip Reese and Nancy Weaver Teichert of The Sacramento Bee used state inspection reports to show that “ Sacramento nursing homes failed to meet minimum federal and state standards more often than facilities in the rest of the top 10 largest cities in California during the last two years“. The leading complaints were quality-of-care, and…
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