February 2012
17 posts
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WatchFrom our “Behind the Story” series: More than 100 people, mostly women, are attacked with acid every year in Pakistan. Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy speaks about her investigation into this wave of violence and her award-winning film, which looks at what is being done to help women recover. “Saving Face” won the 2012 Academy Award for best documentary short. The HBO...
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WatchWatch our new video with Al Jazeera: Danger Zone: Ageing Nuclear Reactors.
In March 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
As tens of thousands of people were evacuated from nearby towns and villages, the world waited anxiously to see whether the radioactive fallout would spread across the country, or even be carried overseas....
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WatchIn our series Notes from the Field, senior correspondent Mark Schapiro speaks by Skype with journalist Mimi Wells on assignment for CIR in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. In this video, Mimi discusses how in Ghaziabad, outside the perimeter of an American base, Lt. Col. Dan Wilson tries to build relationships with Afghans amid violent clashes with insurgents. Watch earlier videos here.
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WatchOur new investigation, Broken Shield, looks at the failure to protect and serve California’s most vulnerable residents. Our video, Manner of Death: Undetermined, examines one case: After Van Ingraham was found with his neck broken at the Fairview Developmental Center, police at the state institution closed the case without answers. But the patient’s heartbroken brother went after ...
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WatchWho funds presidential campaigns and what do they want in return? CIR set out to answer those questions in investigating big donors to the 1992 race between Bill Clinton and George Bush in the PBS “Frontline” documentary, “The Best Campaign Money Can Buy.” Now, 20 years later, producer Stephen Talbot recalls what CIR uncovered and what we can expect from the $2 billion race for the presidency...
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Mentally ill immigrants trapped in US detention...
With his handcuffs briefly unlocked from his wrists while he faced a judge, Miguel Canto-Ortiz wore the familiar mark of a detainee: a bright orange shirt from the Santa Ana Jail. But unlike the thousands of others who have passed through this courtroom, Canto-Ortiz was a man without a lawyer.
On the back of his shaved head is a scar from a traumatic brain injury that rendered him unable to...
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WatchA new series called “Notes from the Field” on our (redesigned!) website, features reporter diaries and interviews capturing first impressions and raw experiences from the front lines. Senior correspondent Mark Schapiro talks by Skype with journalist Mimi Wells on assignment for CIR in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. In this first video, Wells discusses how female Marines at Camp Lejeune,...
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“Nobody is telling male reporters to stay home despite the fact that they have...”
– Lauren Wolfe, journalist and director of Women Under Siege, in an interview with Torie Rose DeGhett. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
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“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the...”
– Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the majority opinion declaring that California’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. More in the San Francisco Chronicle. (via californiawatch)
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California Watch: SF official wants to restrict... →
californiawatch:
A San Francisco politician wants tougher oversight of local police and the role they play in terrorism investigations following complaints from residents that they were unnecessarily targeted for questioning and surveillance by Joint Terrorism Task Forces.
Dozens of new task forces led by…
January 2012
21 posts
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“I believe that this could be catastrophic in terms of HIV prevention.”
– Michael Weinstein, president the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Weinstein was commenting on drugmaker Gilead’s application for FDA approval to market its HIV treatment medication Truvada as a HIV prevention pill. If Truvada is approved for preventive use, it “would be the first agent indicated...
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The Lens & University of Oxford to launch... →
thelensnola:
Our investigation found that the trailers, many of which were proven to be releasing toxic levels of formaldehyde from the particle board walls into the small living space, were being released into the open market with little to no assurance that buyers would be made aware of the possible dangers of long-term exposure to the interior to the trailers — and that the people most...
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“If Google doesn’t like your name, it can block you; if Facebook doesn’t like...”
– Matthew Ingram questions How much should we trust our new information overlords? on GigaOm. (via onaissues)
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Counterterror, disaster response centers not...
Dozens of high-tech command centers built or beefed up throughout the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to promote better information sharing and disaster preparation have struggled to do just that.
A decade later, federal auditors found that two networks – one heavily focused on law enforcement and the other on emergency management – are often unaware of what the other is...
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“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to...”
– Chris Dodd, former U.S. senator and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, to Fox News last week.
As anti-piracy legislation stalled in Congress last week, the movie industry’s top lobbyist, former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, warned Democrats not to count on Hollywood money...
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Resistant bacteria found in US pork products
Researchers have found higher-than-expected levels of deadly bacteria in what is considered the largest sampling of raw retail meat products in the United States.
A team of researchers at the University of Iowa collected 256 samples of pork from 35 retail stores in Iowa, Minnesota and New Jersey. Samples included pork chops, ground pork, riblets, ribs, sausage, blade steak, cube steaks, pork...
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WatchThe Philippines’ swelling population is causing fishing villages to embrace birth control for the first time. And not just as a means to plan their families: They also see it as a path to long-term food security, ensuring that future generations enjoy the same abundance of fish.
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“I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
– Mitt Romney humbly referencing the $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees he earned last year, an average of $41,592 per speech. (via officialssay)
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“Allowing law enforcement records to be forwarded to N-Dex would be a benefit to...”
– Ron Sager, president of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, wrote in support of a program, known as the National Data Exchange, that would nationalize criminal intelligence data. Minnesota is weighing whether to link a statewide database with the FBI information-sharing system, despite...
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Private company hoarding license-plate data on...
Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.
The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It’s also evidence that...
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"According to a new congressional report acquired... →
via WIRED.
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In Mexico, 12,000 killed in drug violence in 2011
From the Washington Post: “About 12,000 people were slain last year in Mexico’s surging drug violence, according to grim tallies reported Monday by the country’s leading media outlets. Annual indexes of torture, beheadings and the killing of women all showed increases.”
“A circuit judge ruled last month that New Beginnings Baptist Church is the...”
– KKK Store Is Black Church’s Property, South Carolina Judge Finds (via npr)
December 2011
22 posts
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WatchAmerica spends over $500 billion every year so that elderly Medicare patients can get the care they need. But as health care costs rise, many are taking a closer look at what exactly we’re paying for. We’ve been conducting a yearlong investigation into a prominent hospital chain in California that is reporting unusually high rates of serious diseases. Watch our video on this story,...
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Contractor earns $46M to dispose of all that crazy... →
ageofperil:
Fireworks. Medical needles. Insect spray. Cooking fuel. Flammable gas torches. Ammunition. Yes, people forget they have cooking fuel in their travel bags. Or, amazingly, they thought it was acceptable in the first place to take cooking fuel onto an airplane.
So what happens to all that bizarre crap security screeners have to confiscate? It doesn’t just disappear, after all....
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WatchHey Tumblrs - Thanks for following us throughout the year! We’ve had fun engaging with you about both our own and other great investigative reporting from around the world.
For those of you who may not be familiar with our history, we were founded in 1977 and are the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative news organization, producing multimedia reporting that has impact and is...
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WatchThe Long March of Newt Gingrich: Part One - In January 1996, as the country headed into a presidential election year, FRONTLINE aired The Long March of Newt Gingrich, an investigative biography of the outspoken and controversial Speaker of the House. This was a co-production with CIR.
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“Given the timing of my response, and the fact that I typically received emails...”
– James Murdoch, insisting he never actually read an email sent to him that warned about wiretapping at News of the World. (via officialssay)
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Support the Center for Investigative Reporting
Hi Tumblrs! We’re interrupting for a moment to ask for your support. This holiday season, take a moment to support the Center for Investigative Reporting so we can continue to reveal injustice and produce the investigative reporting you depend on! Want to learn about the impact of our work? Read more below from our Executive Director Robert J. Rosenthal.
Since 1977, CIR has been on the...
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As Egyptians move into the second phase of elections this week, Sandy Tolan explores the debate over food policy in the wake of what some are calling the “revolution of the hungry.”
The Food for 9 Billion series is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting, Homelands Productions, PBS Newshour and American Public Media’s Marketplace.
Listen here.
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New website makes it startlingly easy to see what... →
ageofperil:
I don’t use online file-sharing networks to download copyrighted music and movies, not due to some position I take on the matter, but mostly because I’m paranoid about linking my computer to anything that can feasibly inject malicious software. So I didn’t hesitate to drop by the site Youhavedownloaded.com, because I knew they wouldn’t have any records of my Internet activity....