Medicare Drug Program Fails to Monitor Prescribers, Putting Seniors and Disabled at Risk | ProPublica and The Washington Post
"Prescription data obtained by ProPublica shows widespread use of antipsychotics, narcotics and other drugs dangerous for older adults, but Medicare officials say it's not their job to look for unsafe prescribing or weed out doctors with troubled backgrounds." Also published this weekend is a database of Medicare's prescription drug program.

Beyond Payday Loans | Marketplace and ProPublica
"A near billion dollar company, World Finance is the largest of an often-overlooked breed of high-cost lender: installment lenders. Ranging from a few hundred ...

VG of Norway reports that more than half of kindergartens in Norway have broken the law in the last three years. VG journalists sent hundreds of FOIA requests and analyzed roughly 31,000 pages of audit reports. They found a total of 6,400 violations during that span, including careless hygiene, poor security and failure to meet staffing requirements.

See the full report here. Using DocumentCloud, VG also created a database of the reports.

An analysis by The Record/NorthJersey.com has found that, "in a striking reversal, growing numbers of young parents are choosing the bustle of New York City over the calm of suburban life as a place to live, a trend that is already changing the face of some neighborhoods across North Jersey and could have long-term implications for schools, the housing market and beyond."

Chicago's overall rise in killings hasn't been spread across the city, The New York Times reports. Most of the homicides -- which authorities told the Times are gang-against-gang shootings, happened mostly in neighborhoods west and south of the city's downtown. A map from the Times found that more than 80 percent of the city's homicides happened in only half of the city's police districts. The police district including the business district downtown reported no killings.

"Florida’s K-12 public education system has graduated hundreds of thousands of students in the past decade who couldn’t read, write or solve math problems well enough to take some college-level courses."

"The series “13th Grade” is the result of a collaboration between the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and StateImpact Florida."

New Jersey Transit placed much of its equipment in rail yards that forecasters predicted would flood after Hurricane Sandy, a move that damaged one third of its locomotives and a quarter of its passenger cars, according to a report from Reuters. The damage could cost tens of millions of dollars to repair, according to Reuters.

As homeowners begin to pick up the pieces following the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, their focus turns to insurance. Echoing the situation on the east coast, the Minneapolis Star Tribune investigated the topic of homeowner’s insurance premiums following natural disasters in the state of Minnesota.

The Star Tribune found that rates were steadily hiked up 10-12% over the course of 2012, although the weather trends don't necessarily justify the size of the increase.

"Despite a stunning drop in homicides in D.C., murder remains a stubborn crime to solve and prosecute. The Washington Post has reviewed nearly 2,300 slayings in the city between 2000 and 2011 and found that less than a third have led to a conviction for murder or manslaughter, although the numbers have improved in the past few years."

"According to The Post’s investigation, more than 1,000 cases remain unsolved. In a 15-month study, Cheryl Thompson individually tracked every homicide in the District between 2000 and 2011 to learn what ultimately happened to each ensuing case."

After a report was released by Spokane’s regional health district, the newspaper mapped life expectancy for each neighborhood in Spokane – showing the differences in well-being among its many neighborhoods: People in the county’s wealthy neighborhoods can expect to live longer than those in the poorer ones, by years and years.

The illicit trafficking of Oregon medical marijuana is widespread and highly lucrative, according to The Oregonian's analysis of highway stops, police reports and federal and state court records. Exploitation of the 14-year-old program is made possible by lax state oversight and loose rules lead to the production of far more pot than a typical patient needs, the newspaper found. Nearly 40 percent of Oregon pot seized on the nation's most common drug-trafficking routes during the first three months of this year was tied to the medical marijuana program. Dozens of trafficking prosecutions involve medical marijuana cardholders with existing ...