Four Wisconsin in-home child care providers match sex offender addresses

"An audit of the Wisconsin Shares program released Wednesday found four cases where the addresses of in-home child-care providers matched those of registered sex offenders," according to a report by Raquel Rutledge and Stacy Forster of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The audit was launched in response to an earlier Journal Sentinel story that showed nearly 500 child care providers in the state had criminal records.

Reporters Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviewed thousands of pages of public records, from IRS documents to financial disclosure filings, to get inside the chemical industry's push to fight a ban on bisphenol A, a chemical used in hard, clear plastics, including baby bottles. Their analysis showed the industry has turned to many of the same tactics — and people — used by Big Tobacco to fight government regulation. The two reporters also found Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a group purporting to be an independent media watchdog, has ties to the industry and groups that fight deregulation.

An investigation co-published by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica reveals that the Food and Drug Administration failed to prevent the distribution of tainted syringes linked to several deaths and serious illnesses. "Three months before the pre-filled syringes were shipped in October 2007, an FDA inspector visited the plant in North Carolina where they were made. She investigated reports of red, brown and black particles in syringes and reported that managers had a plan to deal with rust. The inspector did not note that the plant had switched to an unreliable sterilization method. A week later, when the FDA learned a distributor was recalling 1.3 million of the syringes, the agency should have launched a thorough inspection, according to its operations manual. That didn't happen, an FDA spokeswoman now says, because the agency is so understaffed it no longer follows the policy unless the recalled product posed a reasonable probability of serious injuries or deaths."

Following a mysterious outbreak of salmonella in 2007 linked to pot pies from ConAgra Foods, corporations have moved to place the responsibility for "food safety" on the consumer through warnings and instructions on how to prepare processed food items.  The New York Times reports, "Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show."  Consumers are directed to cook foods to temperatures hot enough to kill off lingering microbes.

An investigation into the handicapped accessibility of Chicago Transit Authority stations by a team of reporters from Columbia College Chicago found that "41 percent of the stations designated fully accessible were not." Using FOIA, the students reviewed over 2,000 ADA-related complaints filed against the CTA from Jan. 1, 2004 through Feb. 28, 2009. Some of their findings included patterns of broken elevators and bus lifts, as well as CTA employees swearing at passengers and denying access to several customers with service dogs.

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants states to assess their own inspection programs, even after Georgia’s failed to prevent a salmonella outbreak traced to a Blakely peanut plant, exposing broad gaps in the nation’s food safety system," according to an article by Alan Judd of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Food safety experts question the efficacy of this plan without thorough auditing and monitoring of the state-level programs by the FDA.

Abigail Goldman of the Las Vegas Sun explored the prevalence of direct-mail contests and sweepstakes that make big claims but use small type to disclose the odds of winning. According to the article, “These halfhearted disclosures make the contests perfectly legal and perfectly manipulative, at least according to consumer advocates, who argue that the schemes fool the elderly, uneducated and naive into thinking they’ve struck it rich.” The article shares the story of Linda, an 81-year-old woman who has 2 cents in savings after paying dozens of contest entry fees and bounced-check charges.

A two-part series in The Miami Herald explains how Florida storefront clinics exploit the market for narcotic painkillers.  Scott Hiassen reports, "Experts blame these clinics for a startling rise in prescription-drug overdose deaths in Florida, including a 107 percent jump in oxycodone deaths in two years....Yet, regulators and police can't control the problem -- handcuffed, they say, by tepid Florida laws that allow these clinics to open in-house pharmacies and sell drugs directly to clients walking in off the street, even from far-away states."

A report by Alan Judd of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveals that the food safety system overseen by Georgia's Agriculture Department is riddled with problems. Only after a fatal outbreak of salmonella was tracked to a Georgia peanut processing plant did the Agriculture Department develop guidelines for inspecting such plants. "The lax oversight of Peanut Corp.’s factory typifies how the state regulates all 27 peanut processors in Georgia," according to the investigation. "When they find violations, inspectors frequently fail to document whether plants correct the deficiencies." Many inspectors employed by the Agriculture Department have no experience in food safety.

A Chicago Tribune investigation raises serious questions about the rigor of safety standards for infant car seats. Thirty one such seats either flew off their bases or exceeded injury limits in a series of frontal crashes conducted by federal researchers using 2008 model year vehicles. The test results were never publicized. Car  seat manufacturers question the crash-test results.