The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Extra Extra
Hospitals Spend Small Fractions of Revenue on Charity Care
“Despite a congressman’s recent assurance that many hospitals “do the work for free,” Oklahoma’s hospitals spend less than 3 percent of their net patient revenues on charity care on average, records show.”
Read MoreWaste Lands: America’s forgotten nuclear legacy
Seven decades after the Manhattan Project turned the nation into a “factory” frantically focused on building the world’s first nuclear bomb, this Wall Street Journal investigation scrutinizes the government’s efforts – and failures – to clean up nuclear material haphazardly strewn across hundreds of sites in dozens of states.
Read MoreIs Funeral Home Chain SCI’s Growth Coming at the Expense of Mourners?
In the death-care industry, as practitioners call it, SCI casts a long shadow. Based in Houston and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYX), it operates more than 1,800 funeral homes and cemeteries in the U.S. and Canada. It has 20,000 employees and a market capitalization of $4 billion. For 40 years, SCI has gobbled competitors…
Read MoreA Yellow Card, Then Unfathomable Violence, in Brazil
Two killings in the Brazilian neighborhood of Centro de Meio over a soccer match gone wrong left the country spinning, the New York Times reports. The killings were widely reported as an extreme example of soccer violence in Brazil, a grisly contradiction to joga bonito, to play beautifully, as the country prepared to host the…
Read MoreRing of Fire
Thousands of veretans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are complaining of breathing problems, gastrointestinal disorders, and even rare cancers, the Verge reports. Some have already died of these ailments. A handful of health experts are now concerned that today’s veterans face an emerging epidemic, one threatening the lives of thousands of men and women.…
Read MoreSome non-profits found to keep significant losses quiet
Charities and other non-profits often try to keep their losses quiet to avoid spooking donors, but a Washington Post investigation by Joe Stephens and Mary Pat Flaherty used a new IRS tax return checkbox to find more than 1,000 organizations that reported significant diversions of assets. The Post’s online database is being used by news…
Read MoreCalifornia agencies gamble on pension bonds to cover debts – and lose
Desperate to cover a $40 million shortfall in its pension fund for retired police officers and firefighters, the city of Richmond, Calif., turned to an exotic loan, the Center for Investigative Reporting explains. Today, Richmond still owes more than $12 million on the bond, plus about $5 million in interest, and its pension fund remains…
Read MoreSpinal fusions serve as case study for debate over when certain surgeries are necessary
The rate of spinal fusion surgery has risen sixfold in the United States over the past 20 years, according to federal figures, and the expensive procedure, which involves the joining of two or more vertebrae, has become even more common than hip replacement, the Washington Post reports. More than 465,000 spinal fusions were performed in…
Read MoreTop Seattle parking scofflaws are billion-dollar firms
Washington state drivers who don’t pay parking fines in the City of Seattle face hefty penalties, including the “boot,” a tire clamp that immobilizes a car until the owner pays up. But a KING 5 Investigation found that a select group of multi-billion-dollar companies has been permitted to avoid the penalties while piling up more unpaid…
Read MoreSt. Louis wrongful arrests mount as fingerprint mismatches are ignored
“The Post-Dispatch has identified 100 people arrested in error over the past seven years. Collectively, they spent more than 2,000 days in jail — an average of about three weeks each. One man alone was incarcerated 211 days. About a quarter were held repeatedly — one of them, five times — and 15 were locked…
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