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St. Clair County doles out more than $3.3 million in settlements behind closed doors
“More than $3.3 million in legal settlements have been approved behind closed doors in St. Clair County in the past 10 years — possibly in violation of the state’s Sunshine laws. The settlements range from $900,000 to a teenage boy allegedly sexually abused at the county’s Juvenile Detention Center to $1,000 to a person claiming…
Read More$40-billion missile defense system proves unreliable
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, was supposed to protect Americans against a chilling new threat from “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran. But a decade after it was declared operational, and after $40 billion in spending, the missile shield cannot be relied on, even in carefully scripted tests that are much…
Read MoreNebraska prison doors open too soon
“The examination of prison records revealed that Nebraska Department of Correctional Services officials had released or were set to release dozens of prisoners years before their sentences were supposed to end. All told, state officials had carved at least 750 years off the collective sentences of more than 200 of the state’s worst criminals. The…
Read MoreFriends want probe of 77-year-old’s death after arrest
“Branson residents are questioning why city police arrested a 77-year-old man with health problems on an Arkansas bad check warrant from 1996 and held him in jail for five days. Shortly after his release from Taney County Jail, Evans E. Ray was found dead in his home. It’s unclear how long he was deceased in…
Read MoreSecret Summit: 24 hours with the Koch brothers
“The retreats drum up hundreds of millions of dollars for conservative political candidates and set policy for the Kochs’ network of political organizations, which all share the same goal — moving the country to the right. Most of the cash is funneled through “dark money” groups that are not legally required to disclose their donors.…
Read MoreKids with no vaccinations clustered in some schools
“Some Ohio schools might as well have a target painted on the side of the building as far as public-health experts are concerned. In some schools in the state, as many as 1 in 3 incoming kindergartners and newly enrolled older students have parents who oppose vaccines, according to a Dispatch analysis of schools’ immunization…
Read MoreGPS monitor didn’t stop sex offender who murdered girl
Washington State Department of Corrections documents reveal that parole officers missed telling clues that were being transmitted by a sex offender’s GPS tracking bracelet in the days and weeks before he murdered a 13-year-old girl. Seattle’s KING 5 examined records from the 5-year-old murder as part of its series of investigations into the failures of…
Read MorePublic records request service sues CIA over FOIA practices
MuckRock is suing the CIA over a handful of specific FOIA requests that would shed light on how the agency determines what is and isn’t releasable, among other things. The CIA “has a track record of holding itself apart from, and largely above, the Freedom of Information Act, consistently ignoring deadlines, refusing to work with…
Read MoreVA executives received $100M in bonuses as problems mounted
Executives and employees of the troubled Veterans Affairs health system enjoyed over $100 million in bonuses, according to the Asbury Park Press. The federal government warned the VA in the past about the growing issue of excessive patient wait times and its detrimental effect on the health care system. Still, VA executives and employees received…
Read MoreWeb scraping: Tools, sessions and a discount
Ever wanted to scrape data from the web but didn’t know how? Here’s your chance to learn. We’re offering two sessions on web scraping at the IRE Conference in San Francisco, June 26-29. In addition to that, Helium Scraper has given us some coupon codes for a limited number of IRE members to receive 50…
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