Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock reports on why Alaska authorities had shelved the homicide investigation into the shooting death of a young boy, Durga Owens, in a remote area north of Fairbanks. Listen to her two-part report on Alaska Public Radio. ...
Reporting for MSNBC.com, Robert McClure of InvestigateWest finds that city and state parks around the country are being developed into golf courses, condominium – hotel complexes, and parking garages, all to raise funds for cash-starved government bodies. This, despite promises to maintain open and recreational space that relied on federal funds for land acquisition and improvements. The National Park Service has an oversight ...
Reporting for the Atlantic, Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellman describe the fate of girls in Pakistan: aborted and abandoned by families who prefer boys. The birth of a girl is cause for mourning in a country where parents calculate the cost of having male or female children. As their report explains: “A recent United Nations report on sex selection cites the Population Council’s research that ...
Kevin Heldman reports in Capital New York about the origins of a murderous Albanian crime syndicate: Tirana, Albania. He traveled there to meet their crew members, and has filed the first part in a series. He tracked down one of the crime syndicate’s former enforcers to a town two hours from Tirana: “He worked primarily as muscle and as a driver for ...
FairWarning’s investigation of the billboard industry and its regulators finds illegal, poisonous, tree-clearing practices: “Robert J. Barnhart was a crew chief for a billboard company, and a soldier in a war on trees. Trees were the enemy if they spoiled the view of a billboard. On days of an attack, Barnhart, 27, would arrive by dawn at Lamar Advertising Co. ...
(Mongolia) – As Daniel Grossman reports for Public Radio International’s The World: “Mongolia’s nomadic herders make up roughly half the country’s population, but their traditional lifestyle is seriously threatened by climate change. ..Grossman recently met with a family of nomads who are being affected by the changes and an American scientist who’s chronicling them.” The sudden hot spells and cold ...
“‘Don’t tell anybody.'” It’s a common phrase for victims of sexual abuse in Pakistan to hear from their mothers. … “[I]f a mother learns that her husband is sexually molesting her daughters, she has nowhere to turn because there is little to no state assistance for battered women in Pakistan if they chose not to live with their husbands. … ...
Reporting for Newsweek/Daily Beast, Brendan Brady finds A deadly Thai insurgency has Buddhists scrambling for guns: “HuaHui, a long-bearded villager, exemplifies the kind of self-appointed power that the militia system offers Buddhists. At the entrance to his restaurant, he sits behind a makeshift bunker, holding an M-15 assault rifle. He keeps a cache of weapons on hand, along with special bullets ...
2012 Tracie McMillan – The New York Times likes her new book, “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table.” From the Times review: “The news Ms. McMillan brings about life on the front lines is mostly grim… She names names… [Her] book is lighted from within by anger at the poor food options many in ...
2012 Christopher Ketcham – The cover story for the January 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine is “Stop Payment!” which discusses efforts to rally homeowners to fight back and file lawsuits, if their mortgages were packaged for sale as financial products. Leading the efforts, and Ketcham’s story, are the people behind the National Homeowners Cooperative and the website Protect America’s Dream. Ketcham ...