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Nanomaterials may pose serious health risk
Once confined to cutting-edge labs, nanotechnology has an increasingly pervasive place in everyday life. Its ultra-tiny engineered particles are now in as many as 10,000 products. A series by Andrew Schneider of AOL News shows a growing body of research suggests these nanomaterials pose significant and potentially fatal health risks including lung, heart and brain…
Read MoreSeismic safety repairs slow at public universities
Nearly 180 public university buildings in California used by tens of thousands of people have been judged dangerous to occupy during a major earthquake — including libraries, classroom buildings, student apartments, gyms, a hospital and even a child care center, a California Watch investigation has found.
Read MoreCAR2010: Don’t stop the learning
By Jaimi Dowdell, IRE Training Director IRE Resource Center staff have been busy adding tipsheets from the CAR conference. Handouts include information on forensic accounting, Web scraping, data on deadline, Twitter and more. In addition to this, many of the wonderful presenters and attendees have been sharing their tips, data and tutorials on the NICAR…
Read MoreSome Massachusetts companies abused job creation tax breaks
Todd Wallack of The Boston Globe reports on the misuse of the Massachusetts’ Economic Development Incentive Program which provides tax incentives to companies that invest and create jobs in the state. A review of records shows that hundreds of projects created fewer jobs than promised while others actually reduce employment while still collecting the tax…
Read MoreFree mapping tool available to IRE members
IRE members have access to a Web-based data exploration application to quickly and easily analyze demographic data while on deadline. ESRI and IRE made a special agreement to offer ESRI data to IRE members at no cost. This program will save journalists time and money by making ESRI data available in an easy-to-view format. A…
Read MoreNominee’s links to TSA contractors raise ethics concerns
Last week, President Obama nominated Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding to head the Transportation Security Administration, but Harding’s ties to several TSA contractors via Harding Security, a firm he founded in 2003, have raised ethics concerns. “A review of Harding Security’s business activities by CongressDaily showed that of 21 companies listed on the firm’s…
Read MoreStimulus funds for special-education diverted for other uses
An investigation by Shannon Mullen of the Asbury (N.J.) Park Press shows that special-education stimulus funds have been diverted to other costs in Monmouth and Ocean counties, including legal fees and teacher benefits. “The redirection of funds was possible thanks to a previously little-used provision in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal statute…
Read MoreThe Year in CAR slideshow
Take a look at some of the best computer-assisted news stories from the past year in this presentation: Year in CAR slideshow. IRE executive director Mark Horvit and training director Doug Haddix gave the presentation last week during the Computer-Assisted Reporting conference in Phoenix. Each slide has a short description of the story, along with a…
Read MoreKeep up with the latest news at the 2010 CAR Conference
There are several options for keeping up with the latest at the CAR conference. To keep track on Twitter, look for either #nicar or #nicar2010 and follow IRE/NICAR on Twitter @ire_nicar Several members of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism are attending the conference and keeping a running blog passing along some…
Read MoreLoophole in Hawaii’s pay-to-play law exploited by donors
An investigation by the Honolulu Advertiser found that donors linked to city and state contractors are giving money to candidates for Hawaii’s gubernatorial races. Experts say the donors are exploiting a loophole in Hawaii’s five year-old pay-to-play law. The study is based on a computer-assisted survey of more than 2,300 campaign contributions made to three…
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