HUD apartment loans questioned

A three-day series by The Columbus Dispatch explored a little-known facet of the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage insurance, which, in addition the helping first-time home buyers obtain loans, insures $56 billion in outstanding loans for developers to build and renovate apartments for people of modest means. "Bad loans, no penalties" examined how developers who have defaulted on $8.5 billion in loans the past decade walked away without any liability, and continued to receive HUD money. Meanwhile, HUD dumps the failed mortgages by selling them to investors, leaving tenants caught in the middle.

An investigation by CNN’s Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost led to a major policy change in how much the U.S. Postal Service will pay for an employee’s home. The investigation also prompted an inspector general’s review that criticized how much the agency spends to relocate employees.  CNN revealed how the agency was buying homes costing more than a million dollars and incurring a large loss on when they were sold.

A series in the Los Angeles Times examines how effectively districts across California are dealing with teachers and other staff who are failing their students. In the Los Angeles Unified school district, "about 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year, even as layoffs are considered because of a budget gap," according to a report by Jason Song. One teacher has continued to collect his salary for the past seven years while his fitness to teach has been under evaluation by the district.

An ABC News investigation by Asa Eslocker, Joseph Rhee and Eric Longabardi examined the safety of the 55-year-old seaplane used by Red Bull to promote its energy drink across the country. The plane was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1976, but “it flies over the heads of hundreds of thousands of people a year under an ‘experimental airworthiness certificate’ granted by the FAA in 2008."

In a five-month investigation, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., looked at court attendance among police officers. Reporters Jason Riley and R.G. Dunlop found, “More than 600 defendants facing such felony charges as drug dealing, robbery, burglary and assault were set free in 2007 because the Louisville Metro Police officers who arrested them failed to appear for hearings in Jefferson District Court.”

Tisha Thompson at WTTG-Washington, D.C., found more than one-third of federal judges are at least 70 years old, the age at which the majority of states require their judges to retire. One judge is more than 101 years old and still hearing a full case load. Thompson created an interactive Web site with state-by-state comparisons of federal versus local judges using a database she created based on the biographical and demographic data for more than 1,200 judges.

"A two month I-Team investigation into Office Depot and its lucrative contracts with local governments and schools, is prompting swift action by Missouri's Attorney General," reports Leisa Zigman of KDSK-St. Louis.  The investigation revealed deceptive pricing and over-charging on products outlined in the contracts.  Former Office Depot senior sales account manager David Sherwin stated, "The total dollar amount overcharged through fraud to these government accounts is somewhere in excess of $80 million to $110 million every year."  Sherwin was fired from Office Depot and is now working as a whistle blower with the Florida Attorney General.  Six states are currently investigating similar allegations against the company.

A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution details escalator injuries throughout the metro area. Every week in metro Atlanta people are badly injured riding escalators. They fall and crack their heads, or get their clothing or luggage tangled in the machinery. And in the worst cases, they suffer amputating injuries. Injuries associated with children wearing Crocs-like shoes have received recent media attention, but families have been petitioning the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for safer escalator design since 1978 — long before Crocs were invented.

William Booth of The Washington Post reports that journalists are finding themselves at increased risk as violence escalates in Mexico's drug war.  On November 13, Armando Rodríguez, a reporter for El Diario in Ciudad Juarez, was murdered in front of his home.  Earlier in the month, the decapitated head of a drug dealer was placed at the foot of a paperboy statue in the Plaza of Journalists.  "The attacks against journalists, which run from threats hissed on their cellphones to grenades lobbed into their newsrooms, form a new front in the larger war the drug cartels are waging against Mexico's social and government institutions...Mexican journalists say the threats may serve to muzzle their investigations and stop them from naming names. They also suggest that the cartels are attacking them to demonstrate their own power."

The Seattle Times published the first part of a series revealing failures by Washington hospitals to control the spread of drug-resistant staph infections known as MRSA. Washington state hospitals are not obligated to track infection rates, but The Times analysis of millions of documents "revealed 672 previously undisclosed deaths attributable to the infection." State and federal inspection reports showed that hospitals in the state frequently violate basic safety measures that help prevent the spread of germs and infection. Statistics show that six out of seven people infected by MRSA contract the infection at a health-care facility.