Extra Extra Monday: Chemical safety data, post-9/11 veterans, NSA love interests

Back Home: The Enduring Battles Facing Post-9/11 Veterans | News21
"In the 12 years since American troops first deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 2.6 million veterans have returned home to a country largely unprepared to meet their needs. The government that sent them to war has failed on many levels to fulfill its obligations to these veterans as demanded by Congress and promised by both Republican and Democratic administrations, a News21 investigation has found."

CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran | Foreign Policy
"The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen,Foreign Policy has learned."

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests | The Wall Street Journal
"National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT."

After West disaster, News study finds U.S. chemical safety data wrong about 90 percent | Dallas Morning News
"Even the best national data on chemical accidents is wrong nine times out of 10. A Dallas Morning News analysis of more than 750,000 federal records found pervasive inaccuracies and holes in data on chemical accidents, such as the one in West that killed 15 people and injured more than 300."

Minneapolis mayor's race lags in disclosing campaign contributions | The Star Tribune
"If candidates for mayor of Minneapolis were running in Boston, they would file a report online of their campaign contributions every two weeks for six months before the election. If they were running in Seattle? Once a week. And in a range of other cities with a mayoral election this fall, they would have shared their donor lists at least four months before voters go to the polls. Instead, contenders in the first open-seat race for Minneapolis mayor in 20 years have received contributions for as long as eight months without having to disclose a single detail to the public, and they won’t release their first campaign finance reports until Sept. 3. Campaign-reform advocates and some candidates say that the system is outdated and that it lags the rest of the country, creating “data dumps” that hinder the public from learning the information in a meaningful, timely way."

Law enforcement can sell confiscated guns | Texas Tribune
"For decades, weapons confiscated by police in Texas were supposed to be repurposed for law enforcement use — or else destroyed. Starting next month, Texans will be able to purchase some of them instead."

Mexican drug cartel activity in U.S. said to be exaggerated in widely cited federal report | The Washington Post
“The number, widely reported by news organizations across the country, is misleading at best, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and drug policy analysts interviewed by The Washington Post. They said the number is inflated because it relied heavily on self-reporting by law enforcement agencies, not on documented criminal cases involving Mexican drug-trafficking organizations and cartels.”

Kentucky budget cuts deprive poorer youth | Al Jazeera America
“These days, Terry, Newman and tens of thousands of other low-income Kentuckians feel under attack. Subsidies for child care and kinship care, the two state programs most central to their lives, which allow them to parent and prevent their fragile work routines from collapsing, were all but eliminated from this year's budget. Earlier this week, families rallied in Frankfort, the state capital, to protest the cuts.”

Bounce-house rentals not all fun and games | Houston Chronicle
"As children's birthday parties ballooned into themed events and pricey productions in recent years, bounce houses became must-have entertainment for some parents. But as the bounce house rental business has grown locally, so have the number of unlicensed operators. At least 170 of these businesses advertise their services in the Houston region, but only 30 are actually licensed with safety inspections, based on a Houston Chronicle analysis of state records."

A New Yorker article states: "The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing. It enables authorities to confiscate cash or property obtained through illicit means, and, in many states, funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime. But the system has also given rise to corruption and violations of civil liberties. Over the past year, many have expressed concern that the state laws designed to go after high-flying crime lords are routinely targeting the workaday homes, cars, cash savings, and other belongings of innocent people who are never charged with a crime."

The Fresno Bee reports: "The Fresno County Jail has been a place of terror and despair for mentally ill inmates who spiral deeper into madness because jail officials withhold their medication. About one in six jail inmates is sick enough to need antipsychotic drugs to control schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and other psychiatric conditions, but many sit for weeks in cells without medication previously prescribed by private doctors, say family members, lawyers and psychiatrists. If the inmates do get medication, it’s often at a lower dose or is a cheaper generic substitute that doesn’t work as well, they say."

"Police and prosecutors say checks-and-balances ensure the integrity of the system. But defense attorneys -- whose clients faced years in prison because of Jackson's work -- say police wasted thousands in taxpayer dollars putting so much faith in a dubious undercover source," The Oregonian reports.

For community service and corrective classes, San Diego law enforcement has sent defendants to organizations like the Corrective Behavior Institute for community service. In doing so, it has "sent people who haven’t followed the rules to a nonprofit that hasn’t followed them either," according to an investigation by the Voice of San Diego, which found shoddy record keeping, financial red flags and poor internal oversight at the organization at the Corrective Behavior Institute.

After finding out that the Cleveland Police Department had no idea how many rape kits were in their evidence room, Plain Dealer reporters Rachel Dissell and Leila Atassi started digging into how sexual assault cases were handled in their city.

Finally, "unsolved crimes by the dozens are returning to Cleveland with DNA matches and the expectation that this time, justice will be served. Each new DNA "hit" stems from evidence collected as part of a so-called rape kit in a hospital room years ago."

UCLA officials bend travel rules with first-class flights, luxury hotels | The Center for Investigative Reporting
Over the past several years, six of 17 academic deans at the Westwood campus routinely have submitted doctors’ notes stating they have a medical need to fly in a class other than economy, costing the university $234,000 more than it would have for coach-class flights, expense records show.

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans | Reuters
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

FBI allowed informants to commit 5,600 crimes | USA Today
The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

Cracks in the System: Salmonella proves to be a problem in beef too | Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
As recently as March of 2013, Salmonella Typhimurium in ground beef was linked to more than 20 human illnesses in six states. In September 2012 nearly 50 people in nine states became ill from eating ground beef tainted with Salmonella Enteritidis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Top drone supporter, beneficiary now looks to uses closer to home | Investigative Reporting Workshop
The strikes are deeply unpopular in South Asia and in other parts of the world. The Taliban killed 10 foreign mountaineers in Pakistan in June — in retaliation, the Taliban said, for the U.S. drone strikes. Many of the drones that were used in Pakistan, along with those sent to Afghanistan, will soon have a permanent home here in the U.S.

Syria’s unspoken crimes | Vanity Fair
There have been reports that in war-torn Syria, rape has become an epidemic as both sides seek to de-stabilize, frighten, and ruin the other. But unearthing the stories of these widespread atrocities is difficult, and often impossible. Women in Syria face dire political, personal, and familiar consequences if they admit to being victims—no matter how awful the tale. Janine Di Giovanni traveled into the country and through the surrounding refugee camps to trace the few stories that rape survivors dared to speak aloud.

Mexican journalists targeted | Al Jazeera
Amid the recent fanfare surrounding big arrests in Mexico's drug war, those journalists still daring to shed light on the cartels and corrupt state officials keep on dying, and the killers, they just keep on getting away with it.

No accountability in police custody death | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Gina Barton exposes the lack of accountability in a death in police custody. After James Perry died, each agency that handled a piece of the case -- police, sheriff, local hospital -- cited the other in excusing its own actions. Perry, an epileptic, died on the floor of the jail six hours after suffering a seizure.

Industry muscle targets federal 'Report on Carcinogens' | Center for Public Integrity
Increasingly, industry is targeting Huff’s former employer and its parent, the Department of Health and Human Services — in particular, HHS’sReport on Carcinogens. Two lobby groups sued the agency after two widely used chemicals were listed in the report. In a victory for industry, lawmakers mandated additional, ongoing scientific reviews of the document. And, a trade association representing makers of fiber-reinforced plastics claimed credit for a congressional hearing last year that evolved into an open airing of industry grievances.

A USA Today report states that the FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

“No video. No audio. No transcripts. The Virginia Supreme Court operates in a total blackout. The Alexandria Gazette Packet exposes the shocking lack of transparency at the commonwealth's top court.”

According to a Newsday report, “a North Bellport street gang that calls itself the "Natural Born Killers" is recruiting children as young as 9 years old to join the group, said residents and the head of the Suffolk County Legislature's public safety committee."