The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Government (federal/state/local)
Preparing the battlefield
New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reports that Congress agreed late last year to President Bush’s request to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. Quoting current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources, Hersh said the funding is designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. He also quotes fired Admiral William Fallon, former head…
Read MoreU.S. attorney to reopen inquiry into ’88 blast that killed 6 firefighters
The U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., has asked the Justice Department to appoint a special attorney to review convictions in the firefighters explosion case. The move was prompted by an investigation published in The Kansas City Star on Sunday in which witnesses said a federal investigator pressured them to lie and a new witness…
Read MoreCircumstances of trooper’s death kept secret
John O’Brien of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.) investigated a fatal friendly fire shooting by state police. For more than a year, top officials kept a lid on details about the killing of Trooper David Brinkerhoff. They avoided a grand jury and kept the trooper’s widow in the dark. The story reveals for the first time…
Read MoreOnline courses inflate faculty pay
Mackenzie Ryan, of the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, recently looked into state salary earnings and found a state university contract incentive that pays professors for teaching online classes. Pay for these courses, taught in addition to their normal work load, is based on a on a per-student, per-credit bases which pushes some professors to earn…
Read MoreIncident at CDC lab shines light on safety concerns
Following a failure in the ventilation system at the Centers for Disease Control facility, the door of a high-containment lab was sealed with duct tape, according to a report by Alison Young of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The air-flow failure lead to the potential exposure of nine CDC employees to Q fever, a potential bioterrorism agent.…
Read MoreWar veterans used in controversial drug testing
A Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found that distressed soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are being targeted by the government for drug testing. The drugs being tested include some with severe side-effects such as psychosis and suicidal behavior. In the case of one study, it took the Veterans Administration over three months…
Read MoreCommission plagiarized study for own report
A report by Georgia’s mental health commission lifted large portions from a Michigan study published in 2004, reports Alan Judd and Andy Miller of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The report presents as its own work entire sentences, paragraphs and longer passages from other sources, with no more than superficial editing. It duplicates, with only two minor…
Read MorePaper’s investigation leads to DNA tests for inmates
The Columbus Dispatch, in its ongoing coverage of inmate DNA testing, reported that half of the 30 cases highlighted by the newspaper in January as prime candidates for testing have been approved, and evidence is headed to the lab. These fifteen tests are more than have been done in the entire 5-year history of Ohio’s…
Read MoreOver $500,000 in low-income housing funds misspent by nonprofit
An investigation by AmyJo Brown, of the Pine Bluff Commercial (Pine Bluff, Ark.), revealed that over $500,000 in federal money earmarked for low-income housing was misspent by Progressive Southeast Arkansas Housing Development Corporation, a local nonprofit leading the city’s low-income housing development project. “The records show that of the 47 new, low-income houses and four…
Read MorePentagon’s logistics concerns mean profit for transportation companies
Air freight companies are profiting from the war as the Pentagon increases its investment in logistics, reports Michael Fabey for Air Cargo World . "Contracts and contract modifications for companies flying cargo and passengers to the war zones in 2006 and 2007 totaled about $5.6 billion, according to an Air Cargo World analysis of data.…
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