A Center for Investigative Reporting analysis of more than 38,000 contributions to California Assembly Democrats in the 2011-12 campaign shows a link between donations to Speaker John A. Pérez's targeted races and a lawmaker’s prospects for important legislative assignments.

Among CIR's findings is that mega-donors to Pérez’s targets – three lawmakers who gave more than $250,000 – obtained positions of power.

"Thanks to their political clout and now a new Industrial Police force that crushes dissension at their plants, labor activists say, it is the factory owners themselves who keep garment workers' wages lower than anywhere else in the world - and all too often get away with lax safety standards," according to Reuters' investigation.

"State officials noted in their review that the Nashville-based company had low cash balances at the end of 2005 and 2006, with checks written in excess of its bank balance each year. Still, Georgia backed the venture, pouring in a little more than $1 million in grants and a loan to help the company upgrade equipment at its Dodge County factory. In return, the company promised 77 new jobs," according to an investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Today, Reuters released two articles about Google and the company’s tax structure in the UK:

From 2006 to 2011, Google generated $18 billion in revenues from the UK and paid just $16 million in taxes. Google defends its low tax bills by saying it does not have a British tax presence, because its sales to the UK are made by staff in Ireland. A Reuters examination of Google’s activities raises questions about that. Our reporting reveals many employee roles located in Britain that actually target, negotiate and close sales of Google’s advertising products to its customers. Also ...

"Some of America's best-known companies and largest temp agencies benefit from — and tacitly collaborate with — an underworld of labor brokers, known as raiteros, who charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage," according to an investigation by ProPublica.

Investigate West has obtained new documents that tell the story of Boeing and its allies worked to delay rules regarding consumption of toxic fish in Washington. This issue has become a political dilemma for Washington policy makers, with Indian tribes on one side wanting stricter water pollution rules to prevent consumption of toxic fish, and an influential aerospace industry that was dead set against tightening the rules.

"For nearly three decades, Eastman Kodak Co. buried tons of radioactive waste at a company-owned site along Weiland Road in Greece. The low-level waste, most of which will remain radioactive for billions of years, is still there at Eastman Business Park, in a now-closed landfill bordered on two sides by houses and apartments. Route 390 and Latona Road separate the site from more residential neighborhoods to the west. But the landfill receives virtually no government oversight," the Democrat and Chronicle found in its investigation.

"Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there," according to a Reuters investigation.

"What has not been revealed until now is how BP hid that massive amount of oil from TV cameras and the price that this “disappearing act” imposed on cleanup workers, coastal residents, and the ecosystem of the gulf. That story can now be told because an anonymous whistleblower has provided evidence that BP was warned in advance about the safety risks of attempting to cover up its leaking oil," according to the Daily Beast's investigation.

How the gun lobby has already blocked Boston’s bombing investigators | MSNBC
“One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.”

What BP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill | Newsweek
“What has not been revealed until now is how BP hid that massive amount of oil from TV cameras and the price that this “disappearing act” imposed on cleanup workers, coastal residents, and the ecosystem of the gulf. That story can now be ...