From Joseph Mazige, for Munno Voice of Uganda, an investigation of newly developed oil fields, which have failed to meet expectations for reducing joblessness and poverty. Instead, the oil companies provide good jobs for skilled foreign citizens but offer local residents positions as guards and laborers. Local business owners also complain they are denied service contracts; the foreign oil firms do ...
A joint investigation by the Student Press Law Center and The Columbus Dispatch casts serious doubts on the accuracy of crime reports sent by colleges to the U.S. Department of Education. An overwhelming number of colleges report no sexual assaults, or no violent crimes at all, each year. The investigative team documented crimes – including the report of a gang ...
For WAMU-FM, Patrick Madden reports on District of Columbia contractors who contribute to local politicians – who have the final say over contracts worth $1 million or more. Madden took a deep dive into campaign contributions and found the tight control over contracts by City Council members has spawned a “Pay to Play” culture in DC government. Madden and the team ...
From Moonshine Ink, an investigation of public funds drained for a hospital expansion in a small California town and an “all-in-the-family” consultant contract that is an apparent conflict of interest. Reporter David Bunker finds that public funding of the hospital district does not clearly benefit patients. “The billing and care at Tahoe Forest Hospital is similar to a private hospital ...
From Estacios Valoi for Oxpeckers, findings of official complicity in the slaughter of elephants – which has become “industrial” in scale in northern Mozambique. “The killing of elephants in the north of Mozambique is reaching proportions never seen before,” an advisor to the World Conservation Society told Valoi. Their ivory tusks are then smuggled across borders, mainly to China and ...
For “Making Contact” and KBOO-FM – Portland, Barbara Bernstein has produced the radio documentary “Fighting Goliath,” exploring the environmental protest in the Pacific Northwest over proposed industrial trucking corridors for heavy mining equipment. The equipment “mega-loads” were headed to Canada and the sites of the controversial Tar Sands mines, one step in the process of exploiting Canadian oil resources for American gas tanks, if ...
For Info-Afrique.com, reporter Christian Locka reports that a contractor working for the leading palm oil corporation in Cameroon dumped human excrement in the Mboma river, polluting water used for drinking and cooking water. The company, formerly owned by the state, is now owned by a French businessman. Land has been taken to make way for the palm oil farms, and graveyards, ...
From Chad Bouchard for 100Reporters, the tragic story of millions of dollars from the U. S. State Department squandered on misguided attempts to bring clean drinking water to rural residents of Iraq. The project in the Sinjar district, in northwestern Iraq, was undermined in part by a history of government corruption in the region, corruption that has fueled anger and aided Islamic State recruitment. Since Bouchard’s ...
Li Miao Lovett reports for the National Radio Project that a chemical considered too dangerous for household use is still being sprayed to kill insects on croplands, exposing farmworkers and their families to its hazards. An excerpt from the report: In 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – EPA – moved to protect children by banning in-home use, but the pesticide [chlorpyrifos] remains widely used in agriculture. ...
From Spare Change, the nation’s oldest street newspaper, published in Boston and sold by homeless and low-income vendors: an investigation of public housing conditions by Shawn Musgrave. In his initial report, Musgrave details the frustrations in getting public records from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although some housing advocates in Boston say housing conditions have improved in recent ...