By Scot J. Paltrow/Reuters

But for a small, little-known White House agency, Melissa Helcher might not have killed Clark Biddle in a Columbus, Ohio, parking lot one day in February.
The 24-year-old Helcher had just eaten lunch with her two children at an O’Charley’s restaurant and was backing her 2012 Ford Fusion sedan out of a tight space. Biddle and his wife, Betty, both 88 and a couple since ninth grade, were making their way across the lot toward a high-school reunion lunch.
Helcher, looking over her right shoulder and through the rear windshield, didn’t see the Biddles coming from the other direction as she eased her car out. Clark Biddle had just enough time to push Betty out of the way before Helcher’s car knocked him over.

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Posted on October 31, 2015

By Lauren Kirchner and Surya Mattu/ProPublica

Uber has long stirred controversy and consternation over the higher “surge” prices it charges at peak times. The company has always said the higher prices actually help passengers by encouraging more drivers to get on the road. But computer scientists from Northeastern University have found that higher prices don’t necessarily result in more drivers.
Researchers Le Chen, Alan Mislove and Christo Wilson created 43 new Uber accounts and virtually hailed cars over four weeks from fixed points throughout San Francisco and Manhattan. They found that many drivers actually leave surge areas in anticipation of fewer people ordering rides.
“What happens during a surge is, it just kills demand,” Wilson told ProPublica. “So the drivers actually drive away from the surge.”

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Posted on October 30, 2015

By Mark Miller/Reuters

Most fast-food workers do not earn enough to retire with much of a pension. Then there is David Novak, executive chairman of YUM Brands, the conglomerate that runs Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC outlets.
Novak’s total retirement holdings, including deferred compensation, are worth $234 million – more than any other Fortune 500 chief executive.
Novak tops the list of Fortune 500 CEOs with the largest retirement nest eggs, according to a study from two progressive think tanks – the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Their data comes from Security & Exchange Commission filings for the 500 largest public companies. The figures are stunning, and cast a harsh and troubling light on soaring retirement inequality. The report offers yet another indication that runaway income inequality is producing grossly unfair retirement outcomes.

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Posted on October 29, 2015

By Alec MacGillis/ProPublica

John R. Leach worked for Peabody Energy Corp. in western Kentucky for 23 years. When he retired, he and his wife Rhonda relied on his pension and health benefits not only for themselves but to care for two severely disabled adult children. So when Peabody notified them in 2007 that their benefits were now the responsibility of a spinoff called Patriot Coal, they had a worrisome premonition.
“We said, ‘There’s something going on here that’s not right,'” Rhonda Leach said.
The family’s worries were justified. When Patriot filed for bankruptcy two years ago, retiree benefits for thousands of mining families were put at risk. While Peabody eventually agreed to pay for some of those costs, Patriot is now back in financial trouble. This time around, Peabody is quietly seeking to get out of paying for any of its remaining agreed-upon obligations to its retirees.
“All I could think is, you dirty, low-down rotten scoundrels. How could anyone with a conscience do something like this?” Rhonda Leach said.

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Posted on October 28, 2015

By Kay Kay & Von Von

“The Pulitzer Crew produced a mockumentary promoting their documentary, Fighting with Music.”

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Posted on October 27, 2015

By Annie Waldman and Sisi Wei/ProPublica

Student debt has tripled over the past decade to $1.2 trillion, with more than a quarter of former students struggling to make payments. But until a few weeks ago, there was very little public data on how well students fare at individual schools.
That changed in September after the government publicly released a massive trove of data on student debt and ProPublica published Debt by Degrees, an interactive database that allows anyone to look up over 7,000 schools and see how well low-income students do at each school.
Using our database, we’ve written about how some wealthy colleges leave poor students with big debts and how many Catholic universities do too.
So how can you report on student debt at your area’s schools? Here are five story ideas to help jumpstart your own investigation:

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Posted on October 23, 2015

By The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

In Spring 2003, an unnamed official at CIA headquarters in Langley sat down to compose a memo. It was 18 months after George W Bush had declared war on terror. “We cannot have enough blacksite hosts,” the official wrote. The reference was to one of the most closely guarded secrets of that war – the countries that had agreed to host the CIA’s covert prison sites.
Between 2002 and 2008, at least 119 people disappeared into a worldwide detention network run by the CIA and facilitated by its foreign partners.
A mammoth investigation by the US Senate’s intelligence committee finally identified these 119 prisoners in December 2014. But its report was heavily censored, and the names of countries collaborating with the CIA in its detention and interrogation operations were removed, along with key dates, numbers, names and much other material.
In nine months of research, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Rendition Project have unpicked these redactions to piece together the hidden history of the CIA’s secret sites.

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Posted on October 14, 2015

By Roberta Rampton/Reuters

Crystal tumblers of Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, on the rocks. Maine lobster and Maryland blue crabs, garnished with lemon slices. An adorable black Montana steer, staring head on into the camera.
These American-as-apple-pie images from a report released last Wednesday are ones the White House wants to spring to mind when Americans think about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sprawling 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal that President Barack Obama has to sell to the U.S. Congress.
But even as Obama’s top trade advisers extolled the 18,000 TPP “tax cuts” on a conference call with reporters, they were quickly overshadowed by the political headwinds that will buffet its passage.

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Posted on October 13, 2015

By The Chicago Teachers Union

On Thursday, the Chicago Teachers Union ran an ad in the Sun-Times highlighting predatory bank deals that take hundreds of millions from our schools.
The mayor and the Chicago Board of Education refuse to fight schemes like the toxic “interest rate swaps,” even as they claim they are broke, lay off educators, and cut from special education.
CPS is about to make a massive payout of up to $228 million to Bank of America and other big banks. This is banker profit on the toxic swaps they sold us – and almost the exact same amount as cuts to school budgets announced so far this year! The mayor and Board of Ed are broke on purpose, choosing to lay off special education teachers to pay Bank of America profits.

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Posted on October 9, 2015

By Paul Kiel/ProPublica

Laws governing debt collection lawsuits and garnishments are often antiquated, poorly thought out and place the burden on debtors to know their rights. Below are ideas for commonsense reforms.
1. Lower How Much Can Be Taken From Debtors’ Wages.
The federal law limiting wage seizures to 25 percent of after-tax income passed in 1968. Lawmakers appear to have pulled this percentage out of a hat. Some states protect more of a worker’s pay – and four (Texas, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas) prohibit garnishment for most debts – but most allow the federal level. Federal surveys show that low-income workers can’t afford to lose a quarter of their pay.

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Posted on October 9, 2015