(Bobi, Niger State, Nigeria) – Reporting for Premium Times and the Daily Trust, Idris Akinbajo finds widespread fraud in the Nigerian federal government program intended to fight poverty and meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). His three-part series found that toilets built for school children were “actually pit latrines with no water. They were so poorly constructed that they were damaged by ...
From I-News in Denver, Colorado: “The number of wildfires in Colorado has exploded during the past decade. So has the number of people living in high-risk fire zones. And public policies for dealing with both actually risk making the state’s fire danger even worse. We analyzed data from the U.S. Census and the state, and found that one in four ...
From reporter Art Levine, an investigation of the story behind a Bain Capital success: “Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney in 1984, prides itself on turning around failing businesses. But lawsuits and critics allege that controversial profit-maximizing methods and the residential treatment industry don’t mix.” The story was published by Salon.com in partnership with The Investigative Fund at ...
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. … ...