Extra Extra
Small-town Texas patients died amid federal, state regulatory inaction
The Dallas Morning News investigation shows how Dr. Tariq Mahmood operated a chain of dangerous small-town Texas hospitals for more than four years until regulators finally started to crack down. Before they acted, repeated warnings about grave risks to patients and potential fraud reached multiple agencies. At least four patients died. The project details how federal…
Read MoreSPECIAL REPORT: High incomes in public housing
Area housing authorities are supposed to be there to help low-income families that can barely get by: single parents, the elderly and people with disabilities, News Channel 11 reports. However after several public records requests, they found out the people who need the help the most are on lengthy waiting lists, while those who’ve conquered poverty…
Read MoreNew $34 million military headquarters in Afghanistan will sit unused
The U.S. military has erected a 64,000-square-foot headquarters in Afghanistan at a cost of $34 million, but has no plans to use it. Senior military officials told The Washington Post that they insisted they did not need the facility and see no point to moving into it as they withdraw forces from the area. Military…
Read MoreDefense Department accounting errors leave some soldiers struggling to get by
A Reuters investigation has found that “pay errors in the military are widespread” and as many have found, including U.S. Army medic Shawn Aiken whose story Reuters has highlighted, “once mistakes are detected, getting them corrected – or just explained – can test even the most persistent soldiers.” “A review of individuals’ military pay records,…
Read MoreOil Spills: U.S. well sites in 2012 discharged more than Valdez
“It was one of the more than 6,000 spills and other mishaps reported at onshore oil and gas sites in 2012, compiled in a months-long review of state and federal data by EnergyWire. That’s an average of more than 16 spills a day. And it’s a significant increase since 2010. In the 12 states where comparable…
Read MoreFemale inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval
“Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.”
Read MoreU.S. system for flagging hazardous chemicals is widely flawed
“A 27-year-old U.S. program intended to warn the public of the presence of hazardous chemicals is flawed in many states due to scant oversight and lax reporting by plant owners, a Reuters examination finds.”
Read MoreViolence reverberates through the city, even with decline in shootings, homicides
“It was just one scene in a city where gunfire has long been too common. In the first six months of this year, more than 1,000 people were shot in Chicago, according to a (Chicago) Tribune analysis.”
Read MoreU.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
“As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, (Leslie James Pickering’s) misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service,” a New York Times report states.
Read MoreWalking our roads could kill you
An Orlando Sentinel report states: “Nowhere in America are pedestrians at greater risk of being struck and seriously injured or killed. Nowhere are drivers more likely to suffer the life-changing split second of taking someone’s life — simply by operating one of the 3,000-pound machines that are so ubiquitous in Central Florida life, and so…
Read More