Unraveling the San Diego campaign finance scandal

"News broke in San Diego last week about a mysterious foreign national bent on influencing San Diego politics by illegally funneling money to political campaigns through a retired San Diego police detective and a undisclosed “straw donor.” Now, the politicians on the receiving end of the tainted funds are scrambling to distance themselves from the scandal." Brad Racino and Joe Yerardi from Inewsource walk through how they unraveled the scandal.

"Despite the "urgent medical correction letter" posted at FDA.gov a trainer for B. Braun, the German manufacturer that produced the recalled morphine drip machine, came to the Seattle VA to teach nurses how to use the machine. According to the nurses, the trainer told them that a correction was coming soon for the device’s breakable plastic clip, but it was safe to use the machines until they were repaired."

WNYC News reports that "over the past decade, as New York City’s backlog of felony cases has grown, so too has the time defendants are spending behind bars before trial. The average pretrial detention in a felony case was 95 days in 2012."

After a couple of recent cases invovling children accidentally shooting their siblings after finding loaded weapons in the house, Minnesota Public Radio analyzed state court data and found that prosecuting parents for leaving guns around kids is rare, but not unprecedented in Minnesota. MPR found that since 2001, 85 such cases have been prosecuted.

An investigation by MPR News has found that a "Republican state representative who steered legislation through the House to drop thousands of people from the state-run MinnesotaCare program is an independent contractor for an insurance brokerage firm that lobbied for the change."

KUOW's John Ryan reports that "in the past decade, a dozen patients of Washington’s Western State Hospital have killed themselves and more than a hundred others have tried."

"Suicide is the second leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults in Washington state. But inside a psychiatric hospital like Western, patients are supposed to be safe, even from themselves. Ryan looks at how patients fall through the safety net."

"A months-long WNYC investigation has revealed that those accused of crimes in the Bronx have a greater chance of walking away without any charges than anywhere else in the city."

"In the Bronx, if a victim isn’t interviewed by prosecutors within 24 hours after an arrest, the DA will almost always decline to prosecute the case — an internal policy followed by no other DA's office in the city."

In collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Atlantic and Living On Earth, Ingrid Lobet reports that "herbicides have become a crucial tool for Oregon's $13 billion timber industry." However, "in spite of precautions, lab results suggest that harmful chemicals are finding their way into residents' bloodstreams."