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Law to keep ammonium nitrate facilities secure may put Texans at risk
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that a state law designed to keep ammonium nitrate secured from would-be terrorists sets a lax standard for keeping Texans safe. According to the state agency charged with enforcing the 2007 law, it has acted only once to temporarily bar a facility from selling ammonium nitrate that…
Read MoreCalifornia agencies gamble on pension bonds to cover debts – and lose
“Some public officials and investment bankers have portrayed pension obligation bonds as a good way to shore up pension funds … But that gamble is not panning out so far for at least five pension obligation bonds issued by California public agencies between 1999 and January, an analysis by The Center for Investigative Reporting has…
Read MoreHidden priests, secret pasts: Church silent about where it houses credibly accused clerics
“Cheplic, who has denied the allegations, is one of at least seven alleged sexual predators quietly placed in the Rutherford retirement home in the past decade, The Star-Ledger found. Some lived there a short time. Others have stayed for years. Neighbors said they were never informed of the men’s presence until told by a reporter.”
Read MoreAgencies can’t always tell who’s dead and who’s not, so benefit checks keep coming
“In the past few years, Social Security paid $133 million to beneficiaries who were deceased. The federal employee retirement system paid more than $400 million to retirees who had passed away. And an aid program spent $3.9 million in federal money to pay heating and air-conditioning bills for more than 11,000 of the dead.”
Read MoreSpecial Report: Help wanted in Fukushima: Low pay, high risks and gangsters
“In reviewing Fukushima working conditions, Reuters interviewed more than 80 workers, employers and officials involved in the unprecedented nuclear clean-up. A common complaint: the project’s dependence on a sprawling and little scrutinized network of subcontractors – many of them inexperienced with nuclear work and some of them, police say, have ties to organized crime.”
Read MoreOfficers facing discipline claim disability for big cost to Milwaukee
“As the district attorney investigated him for allegedly beating a handcuffed suspect, Milwaukee Police Detective Rodolfo Gomez Jr. applied for duty disability retirement, saying stress had left him unable to do his job, the Journal Sentinel has learned.”
Read MoreHospitals 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 MoreLongtime member pledges debut book royalties to IRE endowment
Nancy Stancill, an IRE member for 25 years and a former board member, has pledged royalties from her debut suspense novel Saving Texas, to the IRE endowment. Stancill, of Charlotte, N.C., has pledged the royalties from the first thousand books she sells to support the Godfrey Wells Stancill Small Newspaper Fellowship. The fellowship, established in 2006 in…
Read MoreDept. of Veterans Affairs plans to release data delayed by secruity concerns
The Dept. of Veterans Affairs plans to release reports on first-time patients in the VA health system after not releasing data since March citing concerns for the “security arrangements for the delivery of the data,” according to their website. Previously, the VA had released four reports a year. The most recent data available is for…
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.
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