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Generic Drugs Are Actually Not the Same as Name-Brands, Thanks to FDA Malfeasance

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Charles Seife, Rob Garver - Apr. 28 (News Report) - in 2011, the Food and Drug Administration determined that a major laboratory had committed such “egregious” research violations that years’ worth of its tests — many comparing generics to name-brand drugs — were potentially worthless. The FDA has required drug manufacturers to redo many of the tests from that lab, owned by the now-defunct Cetero Research. But a ProPublica investigation shows that the agency took little action to prevent consumers from taking medicines the FDA no longer knew for sure were safe or effective.

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6 Ways College Admissions Offices Game Their Rankings

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By By Marian Wang, ProPublica - Apr. 24 (Investigative Report) - As college-bound students weigh their options, they often look to the various statistics that universities trumpet—things like the high number of applications, high test scores, and low acceptance rate. But students may want to consider yet another piece of info: the ways in which schools can pump up their stats.

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FDA Approved New Drug Despite Ongoing Investigation of Lab Misconduct

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Charles Seife, Rob Garver - Apr. 22 (Investigative Report) - The drug is a generic version of Tussionex, which combines a long-acting narcotic cough suppressant with an anti-allergy medication. Manufactured by TrisPharma, the drug has a tongue-twisting chemical name: hydrocodone polistirex/chlorpheniraminepolistir

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Who Polices Prosecutors Who Abuse Their Authority? Usually Nobody

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Joaquin Sapien, Sergio Hernandez - Apr. 03 (Investigative Report) - Bennett, a two-time felon, was eventually captured, convicted of murder, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. But Bennett never served anywhere near that sentence. He has, in fact, been free since 2008 because Claude Stuart, the former Queens ass

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The Most Expensive Fighter Jet Ever Built, by the Numbers

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Theodoric Meyer - Mar. 29 (Special Report) - Thanks to the sequester, the Defense Department is now required to cut more than $40 billion this fiscal year out of its $549 billion budget. But one program that's unlikely to take a significant hit is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, despite the fact that it's almost four times more expensive than any other Pentagon weapons program that's in the works. We've compiled some of the most headache-inducing figures, from the program's hefty cost overruns to the billions it's generating in revenue for Lockheed Martin.

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How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Liz Day - Mar. 26 (Investigative Report) - It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving

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After Sandy, Government Lends to Rebuild in Flood Zones

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Robert Lewis, Special to ProPublica, Al Shaw, ProPublica - Mar. 06 (Investigative Report) - If Staten Island’s Great Kills Marina Café is able to reopen this spring after Sandy ripped apart its interior – blowing out windows and punching through walls – it will be thanks to assistance from the federal government. Interactive Map See where the SBA is lending to rebuild The Small Business Administration has approved the restaurant for a disaster loan of almost $1 million. There’s just one problem: Newly drawn FEMA flood maps show the cafe is at high risk of flooding again, raising the question of whether it makes sense to rebuild there or move elsewhere.

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Land Grab Cheats North Dakota Tribes Out of $1 Billion, Suits Allege

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By By Abrahm Lustgarten , ProPublica - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes to buy drilling rights for lowball prices, a flurry of recent lawsuits assert. And, the suits claim, the federal government facilitated the alleged swindle by failing in its legal obligation to ensure the tribes got a fair deal. This is a story as old as America itself, given a new twist by fracking and the boom that technology has sparked in North Dakota oil country. Since the late 1800s, the U.S. government has appropriated much of the original tribal lands associated with the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota for railroads and white homesteaders. A devastating blow was delivered when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River in 1953, flooding more than 150,000 acres at the heart of the remaining reservation. Members of the Three Affiliated Tribes—the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara—were forced out ...

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Drone Strikes Test Legal Grounds for War on Terror

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Cora Currier - Feb. 06 (Investigative Report) - In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama declared that “a decade of war is now ending.”

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Time to Revive the Financial Transaction Tax

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jesse Eisinger - Feb. 06 (Opinion) - A financial transactions tax would take a 3-cent nip out of every $100 traded, and raise billions. The burden of proof is on opponents to explain how so slender a tax could harm the capital markets.

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For Obama, More Prose than Poetry in Second Inaugural

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Richard Tofel - Jan. 21 (News Analysis) - In 2009, in the flush of his first election, Barack Obama declared in his inaugural address that, “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.” Today, perhaps chastened by the trials of governing and the difficulty of gaining election a second time, he did not so much acknowledge that the cynics of 2009 had been right as devote himself to trying, one more time, to move the ground beneath them.

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Why 58 Representatives Who Voted for Hurricane Katrina Aid Voted Against Aid for Sandy

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Theodoric Meyer - Jan. 18 (News Analysis) - When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Congress passed two relief bills almost unanimously. But when it comes to Hurricane Sandy, some in Congress seem to have had a change of heart.

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Five Federal Policies on Guns You've Never Heard Of

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By — By Suevon Lee, ProPublica - Jan. 09 (Investigative Report) - US gun policy is set by both state and federal law. We previously published an explainer on the ways states have eased gun restrictions. But federal policy, too, has become more gun friendly in recent years—and we're not just talking about the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and held that people have a right to keep guns in their homes. Here, we outline five federal policies relating to guns you may not have known about.

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TSA Finally Investigating Cancer Risk of X-Ray Body Scanners

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By By Michael Grabell, ProPublica - Dec. 19 (Investigative Report) - Following months of congressional pressure, the Transportation Security Administration has agreed to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of the agency's X-ray body scanners. But it is unclear if the academy will conduct its own tests of the scanners or merely review previous studies.

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Seven of the Most Striking Ways States Have Loosened Gun Laws

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Suevon Lee - Dec. 18 (Investigative Report) - Friday’s deadly rampage at a Connecticut elementary school marked the 13th mass shooting in the United States this year. Among the 11 deadliest shootings in U.S. history, more than half took place in the last five years. During the same period, states have often relaxed their gun laws, making it easier for individuals to obtain guns, extending the places where concealed guns are permitted, or giving gun owners more robust protections.

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How the Feds Let Industry Pollute the Nation's Water Supply

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Dec. 12 (Special Report) - Advances in geological sciences have deepened regulators' concerns about exemptions, challenging the notion that waste injected underground will stay inside the tightly drawn boundaries of the exempted areas. "What they don't often consider is whether that waste will flow outside that zone of influence over time, and there is no doubt that it will,"

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Anatomy of a News Map

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jeff Larson - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - A little over a month ago, Al Shaw and I made an interactive map of the “Great Migration” of African Americans from the rural south to northern cities during the 20th century. The housing discrimination suffered by African Americans in their new cities led to calls for reforms, resulting in the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But as the fantastic reporting by ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones shows, the federal Housing and Urban Development agency has fallen short of its requirement to take affirmative steps to curb segregation in America’s cities and provide fair housing for everybody.

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Latest Sanction Against BP Goes Beyond Gulf Spill

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Nov. 29 (Investigative Report) - When the Obama administration temporarily banned BP from federal contracts Wednesday, it pointed to BP's "lack of business integrity" and conduct relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill.

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Lost to History: Missing War Records Complicate Benefit Claims by Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Peter Sleeth, Hal Bernton - Nov. 09 (Investigative Report) - A strange thing happened when Christopher DeLara filed for disability benefits after his tour in Iraq: The U.S. Army said it had no records showing he had ever been overseas.

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In Landmark Ruling, "Dark Money" Group Tied to Citizens United Ordered to Reveal Its Donors

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Nov. 06 (News Report) - one of every four dollars spent on the campaign ads, direct mail and robocalls that target voters now comes from so-called "dark money" organizations. The IRS lets these groups keep their donors secret because they are considered "social welfare non-profits." But that changed this past Friday when a Montana judge ordered the release of one such group’s bank records. An investigation had found that Western Tradition Partnership may have misled the IRS about the extent of its political activities, and that citizens have a right to know where its campaign cash was coming from.

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Doubts About Independent Foreclosure Review Spread

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 19 (Investigative Report) - The idea behind the Independent Foreclosure Review seems simple. During the peak of the foreclosure crisis, the banks broke laws and made errors that hurt homeowners. In response, the government mandated they compensate the victims. But there is growing evidence some banks are playing a major role in identifying the victims of their own abuses, raising the question of whether the review is compromised by conflicts of interest.

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How Financial Aid Letters Often Leave Students Confused and Misinformed

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Marian Wang - Oct. 16 (Investigative Report) - The financial aid award letters that colleges send to prospective students can be confusing: Many mix grants, scholarships and loans all under the heading of "Award," "Financial Assistance," or "Offered Financial Aid." Some schools also suggest loans in amounts that families can't afford.

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Dark money shadows New Mexico

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Kim Barker, Justin Elliott - Sep. 29 (Investigative Report) - Dark money groups flooded Albuquerque’s airwaves in August, aiming to sway a hotly contested U.S. Senate race by making more than half the political ad buys on top TV stations. That fact, gleaned through a review of TV station political ad records now available in our Free the Files news application, highlights the role that unlimited anonymous money is playing in this year’s election.

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All the Missing Horses: What Happened to the Wild Horses Tom Davis Bought From the Gov’t?

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Dave Philipps - Sep. 28 (Investigative Report) - The Bureau of Land Management faced a crisis this spring. The agency protects and manages herds of wild horses that still roam the American West, rounding up thousands of them each year to keep populations stable.

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Injection Wells

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Sep. 09 (Investigative Report) - Lax oversight, uncertain science plague program under which industries dump trillions of gallons of waste underground.

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