Sarah Stillman, When Deportation Is a Death Sentence. The New Yorker, Monday, 15 January 2018. “Hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. may face violence and murder in their home countries. What happens when they are forced to return? In the past decade, a growing number of immigrants fearing for their safety have come to the U.S., only to be sent back to their home countries—with the help of border agents, immigration judges, politicians, and U.S. voters—to violent deaths. Even as border apprehensions have dropped, the number of migrants coming to the U.S. because their lives are in danger has soared. According to the United Nations, since 2008 there has been a fivefold increase in asylum seekers just from Central America’s Northern Triangle—Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—where organized gangs are dominant. In 2014, according to the U.N., Honduras had the world’s highest murder rate; El Salvador and Guatemala were close behind…. [Read more…]
Farmaceuticals: The drugs fed to farm animals and the risks posed to humans
Brian Grow, P.J. Huffstutter and Michael Erman, Farmaceuticals: The drugs fed to farm animals and the risks posed to humans. Reuters Investigates, Part One, 15 September 2014. Part Two, 4 December 2014. Part Three, 23 December 2014. Part One: “Documents reveal how poultry firms systematically feed antibiotics to flocks…. Pervasive use [of antibiotics] fuels concerns about impact on human health, emergence of resistant superbugs.” Part Two: “On American dairy farms, sharp rise in the misuse of a potent but risky drug…. The antibiotic ceftiofur is a wonder drug for dairy farmers. But its strength–and the frequency at which it’s used improperly in cattle–pose a threat to public health.” Part Three: “Veterinarians face conflicting allegiances to animals, farmers–and drug companies…. The FDA is counting on vets to curb antibiotic use, but not even the government knows which of the animal doctors has financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.”
Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 3
Scot J. Paltrow, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 23 December 2013. “Part 3, Broken Fixes: Why the Pentagon’s many campaigns to clean up its accounts are failing…. Time and again, programs to modernize Defense Department record-keeping have fallen prey to bureaucratic rivalry, resistance to change and a lack of consequences for failure.” (Part 1 of this three-part series was published on 2 July 2013, and Part 2 was published on 18 November 2013.)
Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 2
Scot J. Paltrow, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 18 November 2013. “Part 2, Faking It: Behind the Pentagon’s doctored ledgers, a running tally of epic waste…. For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollars.” (Part 1 in this three-part series was published on 2 July 2013, and Part 3 was published on 23 December 2013.)
Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 1
Scot J. Paltrow and Kelly Carr, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 2 July 2013. “Part 1, Number Crunch: How the Pentagon’s payroll quagmire traps America’s soldiers. Hobbled by old, incompatible computer systems, the Defense Department’s payroll bureaucracy inflicts punishing errors on America’s warriors.” (Part 2 of this three-part series was published on 18 November 2013, and Part 3 was published on 23 December 2013.)