The Texas Tribune has launched an online database that allows citizens to investigate their legislators’ financial interests. “The Lawmaker Explorer is a first-of-its-kind interactive tool that gives Texans a window into the personal interests of the state legislators elected to represent them. The Explorer, a nine-month research endeavor, is the linchpin of the Tribune’s Bidness as Usual project, a session-long look at ethics ...
Freelance journalist Heather Smathers reports that progress on a Chinese solar power manufacturing project in Nevada is slow-going. “The company [ENN Group of Langfang, China] is still working on obtaining its power purchase agreement, which is needed before the land can transfer..” “Failure to secure a power purchase agreement with a qualified buyer could make the deal null and void. ENN ...
Isaiah Thompson, reporting for the Philadelphia City Paper, exposes how law enforcement authorities seize money from innocent people. Here is an excerpt: “By way of a process known as “civil asset forfeiture,” carried out in Philly by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, the DA may sue to take ownership of confiscated property and, if successful, keep it. The law’s intent is ...
Barbara Moran, reporting for the Connecticut Health I-Team, discovers a toxic, overlooked environmental concern in industrial laundry facilities. An excerpt: Laundering shop and print towels, which are cloths used to wipe oil, solvent and other chemicals off machinery can fuel the release of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) above federal limits. The use and processing of shop towels is largely under-regulated, despite ...
From Sierra Leone, Paige McClanahan and Felicity Thompson report for the Christian Science Monitor on the conflict between preserving nature and developing the economy through an environmentally risky gold mining operation. In this impoverished nation, gold wins. “Tax revenue from the export of all of that gold could mean more money for schools, roads, hospitals, and the meager power grid in this infrastructure-poor country…. “But ...
Reporting for Indian Country Today, 100Reporters.com, and NBC.com, Stephanie Woodard begins a series on young Native Americans who commit suicide, and the efforts to prevent those deaths. “Native teens and twenty-somethings are killing themselves at an alarming pace. For those 15 to 24, the rate is 3.5 times that of other Americans and rising, according to the Indian Health Service (IHS). ...
Writing for Mother Jones, and the Dallas Morning News, Ian Shearn and Laird Townsend report on a legal case with broad implications for human rights, involving American companies that conduct business in foreign lands. A Supreme Court ruling could open the door for ExxonMobil and other multi-national companies to face trial on human rights allegations. Shearn and Townsend report: “As the Supreme Court grapples ...
Reporting for Witness LA, Matthew Fleisher investigates campaign fundraisers that seem to influence assignments and upper level promotions in the Sheriff’s Department. “This summer, I received a phone call from a source in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who said he had information about Undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s pay-to-play scheme. “Pay-to-play exists in the LA Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “I know because I paid.” ...
From ig Publishing, a new book by Trevor Aaronson on the FBI’s manufactured cases of terrorism. Called The Terror Factory, the book expands on Aaronson’s award winning article published in Mother Jones. With a fellowship from the University of California-Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, and a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Aaronson exposed how the FBI concocted schemes, using informants to ...
Marilyn Berlin Snell reports from Thoreau, New Mexico, about the reasons behind a suicide epidemic among Navajo teens. “At the far end of the street, next to the Zuni Mountain pawn shop, is a dirt-packed and weedy cemetery. Plastic gladioli and roses decorate many of the graves, a few newly turned, offering the road’s only splash of color. Some of the ...