Common rail tankers dangerously flawed, AP analysis finds

The Associated Press reports that one of the most common rail tankers allowed to haul hazardous liquids across the country is dangerously flawed (link comes via Fair Warning and NPR), and industry groups have been fighting pushes to increase safety standards.

The Skagit Valley Herald reports that even though "Skagit County has just two full-time mayors, both earn more than the mayors of Tacoma, Vancouver, Yakima and Olympia."

An interactive map was created to compares the salaries with other mayors across the state.

"In recent years, the number of Bay Area kindergartners who have been immunized against diseases like whooping cough and measles has declined. With the 2011-12 school year beginning, The Bay Citizen collected the latest data covering last year from the California Department of Health, so you can see which schools are most susceptible to an infectious outbreak."

Ken Bensinger and Elizabeth Frank of the Los Angeles Times have found that "from mid-2008 to this April, 862 licensed used-car dealers in California — about 1 in 8 — sold at least one vehicle three or more times", a practice that is known as churning.

Bensinger and Frank used DocumentCloud to display their findings.

Lisa Chedekel of the Connecticut Health I-Team has found that in some cases "practitioners who wrote out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prescriptions were also receiving thousands in compensation from the drug-makers."

"As a tough economy wrecked municipal budgets across the country, North Kansas City seemed to be above it all, able to afford well-kept parks, a modern community center and even a community fiberoptic network."

However, a Kansas City Star report has revealed that the once affluent community of about 4,000 residents is now facing a budget shortfall of about $10 million. With FOI filings and the help of computer-assisted reporting, Steve Everly and Allison Prang look at what faces the small town next.

"A Herald-Leader analysis of 41 child fatalities in 2009 and 2010 found at least six cases where the Cabinet for Health and Family Services did not do an internal review even though there were previous reports involving the family before the child died."

"The reviews are supposed to examine the cabinet's actions in a case to see if there were missteps, and to identify needed improvements and training that could prevent future deaths."

In a three-part series The Bakersfield Californian examines Kern County, California's high number of foreign-trained doctors and the impact it has on patient care.

Using the training she learned at an IRE Boot Camp, Christine Bedell, along with her colleague Kellie Schmitt, were able to make their own database to look at how many foreign-trained doctors were board-certified and how that effects their community.

"After a sheriff's deputy shot and killed a local community college football player during a struggle at a burglary scene Feb. 23, The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif., compared recent years' football rosters at College of the Desert to county court databases."

"Reporters Keith Matheny and Kate McGinty found far more criminal activity by players than was previously known, including a player stabbing his teammate and five players robbing a sixth during a drug deal. California's leading community college running back last year played in violation of state law after a robbery conviction, the investigation found."

"In light of the Trayvon Martin case, the Tampa Bay Times spent two months identifying and analyzing self-defense cases in which defendants invoked Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law."

The paper collected photos of victims and defendants and built  nearly 200 case studies into an interactive database. The Times used public records to identify victim and defendant race in each case and analyze its impact. The upcoming Sunday story, already published online, found that the law “is being invoked with unexpected frequency, in ways no one imagined, to free killers and violent attackers whose self-defense claims seem questionable at best.”