The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "School of the Americas" ...
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America's Great State Payroll Giveaway
A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.
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Mauritania: Slavery's Last Stronghold
Two CNN Digital reporters traveled to Mauritania -- a West African nation that became the last country in the world to abolish slavery – to document a practice the Mauritanian government denies still exists. Spending nearly a year to gain entry into the country and conducting many of their interviews at night and in covert locations, John Sutter and Edythe McNamee went to great lengths to uncover the tragedy of multigenerational servitude in Mauritania. They met people who’ve never known freedom; people who escaped slavery to find their lives hadn't changed; and abolitionists who have been fighting against slavery for years with minimal results. It was only five years ago -- in 2007 -- that the country finally passed a law that making slavery a crime. So far, only one slave owner has been convicted. The United Nations estimates 10% to 20% of Mauritanians live in slavery today. But the country continues to deny slavery’s existence and attempted to subvert Sutter’s and McNamee’s reporting by assigning to them a government “minder.” Nonetheless, the two succeeded at putting a face on a shocking practice that is similar to slavery in America before the Civil War, in which people are born into slavery and rarely escape. Their report – “Slavery’s Last Stronghold” -- featured a variety of mediums, including personal video accounts and written stories featuring firsthand accounts from freed slaves and one man’s transformative journey from slave owner to abolitionist. It also included related stories – such as the story of escaped Mauritanian slaves now living in Ohio. In response to the initiative, CNN iReport, the network’s global participatory news community, gathered messages of hope and support to be shared at a school for escaped slaves in Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Tags: slavery; Mauritania; Africa; freedom
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The Smokestack Effect: Toxic air and America's schools
The air outside hundreds of schools nationwide appears to be rife with toxic chemicals. Children are as much as 10 times more susceptible to toxic chemicals than are adults.
Tags: pollution; EPA; children's health; toxic chemicals; exposure risks; Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators; air quality; industrial pollution
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Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
Monkey Girl is an investigative book based on the federal court case Kitzmiller v. Dover, a modern version of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The book examines what to teach children in the classroom when it comes down to evolution and intelligent design. The First Amendment lawsuit against the local Pennsylvania school board had the potential to change school practices nationwide, bringing up the question of whether intelligent design is a scientific or religious idea.
Tags: God; creationism; Darwin;
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God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America
"Since 2000, America's most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school just outside the nation's capital. God's Harvard grooms these students to be the elite of tomorrow, dispatching them to the front lines of politics, entertainment and science to wage the battle to take back a godless nation." The book's aim was "to capture this nerve center of the evangelical movement at a moment of maximum influence and also of crisis, as it struggles to avoid the temptations of modern life and still remake the world in its own image."
Tags: God's Harvard; evangelical movement; Roe V. Wade; gay rights; lawyers; politics; immoral; godless nation
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Takings Initiatives Accountability Project: The Center for Public Integrity investigates ballot initiatives that would radically change land-use and environmental regulation in five Western states
The [non-partisan]Center for Public Integrity investigated 2006 "ballot initiatives that were designed to radically change land-use and environmental regulation in five Western states. They discovered that a trio of "secret donors" accounted for 99% of the propostions' bankrolls, and some of the initiatives did not comply with campaign-finance and other regulations. Then the Center revealed that 85 percent of the funding was coming from a single wealthy real estate investor and Libertarian activist, Howard RIch All but the Arizona inititative failed at the ballot. The Center for Public Integrity set up a stand-alone website-- www.takings initiatives.org-- and filed more than 50 articles on it. "Our general practice-- and a novel one as far as we can tell-- was to mount verbatim transcripts of the interviews on our website, including audio recordings where available. We sought to allow proponents, opponents funders and experts to have a chance to present their side of the story in their own words." The Center also checked with state and federal regulators for compliance of relevant laws and regulations.
Tags: Takings Initiatives; takings clause; ballot initiatives; land-use regulation; environmental regulation; tax-exempt organizations; Howard Rich; Andrea Millen Rich; Council for Responsible Government; William A. Wilson; state campaign-finance filings; public records requests; state freedom of information requests; America At Its Best; Americans for Limited Government; John Tillman; Howard Ahmanson; Fieldstead & Company; property rights; prefessional signature-gatherers; Colorado At Its Best; term limits; nonprofit advocacy organizations; Sam Adams Alliance; Sam Adams Foundation; Legislative Education Action Drive; Parents in Charge Foundation; Social Security Choice.org; Illinois Charitable Trust Bureau; educational vouchers; tuition tax credits; National Taxpayers Union; First Class Education; Susquehanna International Group; Jeffrey YAss; Cato Institute; Alliance for School Choice; Decision Education Foundation; Eric Brooks; Susan Mitchell; Pete Sepp; Kern Family Foundation; Generac Power Systems, Inc.; Milton Friedman; Taxpayer Bill of Rights; TABOR; Laird Maxwell; This House is MY Home; John Whitehead; Lower Manhattan Development Corporation; Exoxemis, Inc.; Family Farm Preservation Pact; Citizens for Community Protection; Kelo v. City of New London; eminent domain; New York Millionaires Assistance Act; Wallace Global Fund; Nicholas C. Dranias; PRNewswire; Eric O'Keefe; getliberty.com; George Soros
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Broken Promises
Tax-exempt deals that provided $7 billion in bonds for low-income housing or inner-city schools turned out to be another way for banks and advisers to make money. Bloomberg investigates situations such as a deal in which JPMorgan Chase and Co. and American International Group "pocketed fees, along with their advisers, totaling $12 million." AIG and CDR of Beverly Hills actually had a deal "in which the financial firms made more money and faced less risk if none of the $220 million in bond funds was used by the public. None of it was." There were 70 other such deals across the country in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. The investigation also includes similar situations of schools being neglected while insurance companies, banks and advisers profit.
Tags: school bonds; Wall Street; JPMorgan Chase and Co.; American International Group; Bank of America; housing bonds
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Public Schools, Private Money
Reporters exposed problems with the management and transparency of nonprofit foundations associated with the North Carolina State University system, and excessive fees charged by Bank of America to run the North Carolina School of the Arts Foundation's endowment.
Tags: education; university; higher education; nonprofits; North Carolina State University; North Carolina School of the Arts Foundation; schools; colleges; mismanagement; Bank of America
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Lessons learned - KPLU investigates: Private money in public education
The station investigates how successfully the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's initiative to transform America's public high schools into smaller learning communities worked, by looking at five-year grants in two school districts in Western Washington, Seattle and Enumclaw. The investigation found miscommunication and misspending of funds.
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Radon in Schools: A Lesson to Learn
Radon, according to the National Academy of Sciences, is America's second leading cause of lung cancer. Average radon levels in Ohio are almost three times the national average. Only 11% of Ohio's schools had ever been tested for radon. Several Ohio schools were tested for radon but did not fix their radon problems.
Tags: radon; National Academy of Sciences; lung cancer; radon-related cancer; Columbus public schools; Columbus Health Department