Health care system allows immigrants to fall through the cracks

Deborah Sontag of The New York Times continued the paper's "Getting Tough" series with an examination of some hospitals' practice of repatriating immigrant patients to their native countries without consent. The article offers several vignettes of the difficulties patients and hospitals face in such situations, including the story of Antonio Torres, a nineteen year-old legal immigrant working in Phoenix, whose hospital sent him to Mexico because he had no insurance.

The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, has already posted a searchable database of who has voted so far during the early voting period of the general election, using data released daily by the Hidalgo County elections department. Users can find out who voted, where they voted and the date they voted. Staff writer Ryan Holeywell noted, "This is especially useful in our part of the state, where the majority of votes are cast during the two-week early period."

Keegan Kyle, Grant Smith and Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analyzed more than 11,000 pothole fixes in the city of Milwaukee and found that the city repaired potholes at a slower rate in minority neighborhoods in the first half of the year. Using SPSS, the analysis found that minority areas on the north side were waiting significantly longer for repairs. Even major arterials in minority neighborhoods took longer to repair than problems in largely white residential neighborhoods. The reporters mapped all the pothole repairs from January through mid-July of this year and overlaid census tract data to find disparities.

A recent study shows that the number of "dead zones" in bodies of water across the globe has doubled every decade since the 1960s, reports Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post. Fertilizer in agriculture run-off and air pollution are two factors that are causing hypoxia in coastal waters. "A few hypoxic ecosystems have improved in recent years because of better management of pollutants...Globally, however, only 4 percent of the dead zones are improving."

A Mother Jones investigation by James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman and David Corn reveals that an NRA spy had infiltrated anti-gun groups for the past several years. The investigation shows that Mary Lou Sapone, a freelance spy for the NRA, spent years posing as gun control activist Mary McFate. McFate had penetrated the highest ranks of the anti-gun organizations for the benefit of the NRA. "McFate's (now former) colleagues note that she was well-positioned for many years to provide the NRA — or any other gun rights groups — the plans, secrets, and inside gossip of practically the entire gun violence prevention movement."

A report by Dina ElBoghdady of The Washington Post reveals that renters are becoming unwitting victims of the mortgage crisis as property owners lose houses to foreclosure. "Several localities around the country, as well as some members of Congress, are pushing to give renters more time before the new owners, usually banks, can evict them. Such a measure takes effect in Baltimore on Monday, and the District plans to launch television ads this month informing tenants of their rights."

A company under investigation for its role the Minneapolis bridge collapse has received a substantial subcontract as part of the reconstruction project, reports Brian Bakst of the Associated Press. "Progressive Contractors Inc. will make nearly $3.6 million for paving and barrier work on the Mississippi River bridge project, according to records reviewed by the Associated Press." Federal investigators have suggested that heavy construction materials placed on the bridge by PCI likely contributed to the collapse of the bridge.

Fifteen witnesses in a trial that led to the conviction of five people in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters told The Kansas City Star that a federal investigator in the firefighters’ explosion case had pressured them to lie. Star projects reporter Mike McGraw conducted hundreds of interviews and reviewed 30,000 pages of court and investigative files and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act to assemble the third in a series of reports on the 20-year-old firefighter's case.

A series by Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post uncovers an alarming level of neglect in immigration centers across the United States. "As tighter immigration policies strain federal agencies, the detainees in their care often pay a heavy cost." In the last 5 years, 83 detainees have died while being held in these facilities. Psychiatric patients "undergo months and sometimes years of undermedication or overmedication, misdiagnosis or no diagnosis." Correspondent Scott Pelley, of 60 Minutes, reported on the issue in conjunction with The Post's investigation.

In "The Cruelest Cuts," a six-part series by The Charlotte Observer, the paper examines the human cost of bringing poultry to the table. The series illustrates how one N.C.-based poultry processor, House of Raeford Farms, masked injuries inside its plants and ignored its largely Latino workers who complained of debilitating pain. To conduct the series, the newspaper interviewed more than 200 poultry workers across the Southeast and reviewed thousands of pages of OSHA documents, academic studies, workers' compensation cases and rarely-examined company injury logs. Said a top OSHA official about the newspaper's findings: "This is abuse. I don't know what else to call it."