American Reporter

For Years, UT-Dallas Instructors Told Officers to Skip Class — and the Cops Got A's. How Did It Go on So Long?

The criminology professor was on the trail of a possible fraud. Even more troubling, it was happening inside his own school.

The first clue: A student told him he had permission to skip classes yet still get credit. Then, when the professor tried to verify the story with his bosses, they bristled.

“You need to be careful what questions you ask,’’ said one.

“It sounds like you’ve been stirring s---,’’ said the other.

Those encounters, described in an investigative report, led the professor at the University of Texas at Dallas to blow the whistle on what the school provost said may amount to academic fraud.

Mississippi Lt. Governor Candidate Hughes Sidesteps Campaign Finance Reform Law He Pushed for in 2017

Mississippi lieutenant governor candidate Jay Hughes filed a campaign finance report Thursday that appeared to violate a reform law he pushed for two years ago.

The Democratic state representative's report showed 14 payments totaling more than $100,000 to a credit card company, UBS Visa. But the form did not itemize what had been paid for using the credit card or cards — a central requirement of the campaign finance reform bill that passed the Legislature in 2017 and took effect last year.

The reform came after an investigative series by The Clarion Ledger, "Public Office/Private Gain," showed how the state's lax enforcement of campaign finance laws has created a tax-free second income for many Mississippi politicians, mostly funded by special interests.

Bucks County Confirms 2018 Death of Jail Inmate

Semion Parkansky took his own life while incarcerated at Bucks County jail last July, but the county did not confirm his death until recently.

Bucks County has confirmed another death at its county jail occurred last year, but has refused to release additional details or say why it was not publicly reported at the time.

This news organization learned about the July 8 death last month after requesting information from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections about deaths at the county jail last year. The state agency listed the death as a suicide in the county’s monthly extraordinary occurrences report in August, according to DOC spokeswoman Susan McNaughton.

Bucks County spokesman Larry King confirmed only the date of death and that the inmate was a 72-year-old man. The county is not releasing any other information surrounding the death “for legal reasons,” King said, but he did not elaborate when asked in an email.

Politics and the suite life for Saints playoffs? Insiders got wish granted by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards

It was the hottest Superdome ticket in 10 years: Saints vs. Rams, with the winner advancing to the Super Bowl.

Every Saints fan wanted to be at the Jan. 20 playoff game.

And a select group of elected officials and political insiders got their wishes realized, for free, in the governor’s state-provided suite.

Those who watched the game at the invitation of Gov. John Bel Edwards included former Gov. Edwin Edwards, New Orleans City Council member Helena Moreno, state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, state Rep. Royce Duplessis, Caddo Parish District Attorney James Stewart, Baton Rouge-based developer Mike Wampold, and Fred Heebe, a lawyer and owner of the River Birch landfill in Jefferson Parish.

The Bicycle Thief

by Steven Leckart, for Chicago Magazine

Tom Justice was once a cyclist chasing Olympic gold. Then he began using his bike for a much different purpose: robbing banks.

The man in the baseball cap and sunglasses waited for the teller to notice him. The morning of May 26, 2000, was quiet inside the LaSalle Bank in suburban Highland Park. Standing patiently by the velvet ropes, the man looked at his wristwatch. The second hand ticked slowly.

“May I help you?” said the young woman behind the counter, smiling. The man reached to the back of his khakis, as if to fish out a wallet. Instead, he presented her with a 3-by-5-inch index card. The teller’s smile wilted. She stared at the words handwritten in black marker: “THIS IS A ROBBERY. PUT ALL OF YOUR MONEY IN THE BAG.

'The man, who would later be described to the police as a slender, clean-shaven white man in his 20s wearing a light blue oxford shirt, returned the note card to his pocket. “Nice and easy,” he said coolly, handing over a white plastic shopping bag from Sports Authority. While the teller anxiously transferred bundles of cash, the man held his hands at his heart, gently pressing his palms together as if he were about to whisper, Namaste.

The Future of Super Bowl Ads Doesn’t Include TV—or Football

by Emma Grey Ellis for WIRED

THIS SUPER BOWL Sunday, as football fans gather for pre-game festivities, musical theater enthusiasts will have their own spectacle to appreciate: a one-time-only performance at famed downtown NYC theater Joe’s Pub, starring actor and Broadway star Dexter’s Michael C. Hall. The production, written by Pulitzer-finalist playwright Will Eno, is an anti-consumerist allegory filled with songs like “Advertising Ruins Everything,” which bemoans contemporary evils like spam and targeted Instagram ads. As strange as this all sounds, though, it gets weirder. The play? It’s called Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical.

That’s right. Skittles’ 2019 Super Bowl commercial is not only not during the Super Bowl, it’s not televised at all. It’s not even an ad.

She made history as a Navy pilot. An all-female squadron just flew over her funeral.

For Rosemary Mariner, her first flight in a new fighter jet — in this case, a Navy A7-E Corsair she was winging over north Florida in the mid-1970s — ordinarily would have been a chance for a woman and her plane to get know each other a little bit.

But nothing was ever quite ordinary for Mariner, a pioneering female aviator, and 10 minutes into the run, her radio crackled with orders to return to base. There were reporters waiting to speak to her.

Mariner’s commander at the time was a Navy officer named John McCain, a recently returned Vietnam POW still years away from his political career. But he already had a keen sense of media relations, and if the papers wanted a story about the first female military jet pilot, he was ready to oblige.

Sources: Gilbert's Bedrock lectured inspectors on how to do their jobs

The firm orchestrated a hands-off policy from workplace safety regulators through high-level talks with the state, a Free Press investigation finds

Bedrock Detroit used its influence to get a rare meeting in the governor's offices and two of its executives were later allowed to tell state inspectors that Detroit's largest developer was exempt from scrutiny after it was cited for worker safety violations.

Executives of the Dan Gilbert-owned company had requested the meeting in the offices of then-Gov. Rick Snyder to "make sure everyone is all on the same page" after Michigan's workplace safety agency in 2016 slapped the company with a $3,500 fine during renovations at the David Stott building in downtown Detroit.

In May 2017, two weeks after that meeting, a pair of Bedrock executives appeared before veteran construction inspectors from the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration and lectured them on how to do their jobs, emphasizing the company's role in downtown's resurgence, a Free Press investigation has found.

"It was hard to swallow," said one person familiar with what happened at the meeting.

EXCLUSIVE: 'This is wrong': Iowa's flawed felon list is disqualifying legitimate voters for years

Jessica Bensley can legally carry a pistol in public — in part because she has never been convicted of a felony.

But last year, Bensley somehow ended up on Iowa's felon list. Because Iowa law doesn't allow felons to vote, the Polk County Auditor's Office, in turn, rejected the ballot she cast in November.

Iowa's mistake cost Bensley her constitutional right to vote. And she wasn't the only one.

A Des Moines Register investigation of six counties found that the ballots of more than two-dozen voters have been wrongly rejected since 2017 — including 20 in November's midterm elections — because their names mistakenly appeared on the felon list the state circulates to county officials.

Iowa maintains the list to enforce one of the nation's most restrictive bans on felon voting rights — permanently barring felons from voting unless they successfully petition the governor or president to restore their rights.

But the Register's investigation shows that the state's process for enforcing its felon ban is seriously flawed — and officials have known about systemic inaccuracies in its database of roughly 69,000 banned felons since at least 2012.

'Money down the drain': WV losing most of water it produces

Only one-quarter of the water West Virginia water systems pay to have treated and pumped ever reaches a faucet, according to a Gazette-Mail analysis of the most recent annual reports filed by 305 public, community, municipal and private water systems to the state Public Service Commission.

More than 55 percent of water produced and treated by West Virginia water plants disappears underground, through hundreds of leaky, dilapidated systems that have not been properly maintained or upgraded in years, completely unaccounted for.

Another 19 percent of the water pumped in the state is lost but “accounted for,” through things like main breaks and fire department use, meaning systems know where the water goes, but still do not collect revenue for it.

This is all water that systems pay to treat and pump using revenue from customers’ bills. As unaccounted water is lost underground, it takes with it millions of dollars that could be used for much needed system upgrades to provide safer, more reliable drinking water for thousands of West Virginians.

After nursing home stay, bedsores lead to man's agonizing death

Frank L. Williams didn't have bedsores when he left Kenmore Mercy Hospital and entered a nursing home for rehabilitation after a stroke.

That fact is established in a document detailing his condition when he entered Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns in the Town of Tonawanda.

Four months later, when he returned to Kenmore Mercy, the 82-year-old retired ironworker had seven bedsores on the lower half of his body. He died 14 days later from cardiac arrest caused by sepsis – an extreme response to infection – according to his death certificate. Hospital records cite infections from bedsores as the most likely cause of the sepsis.

"They told me this is the worst case of bedsores they have ever seen from that nursing home," his son, Mark F. Williams Sr., recalled doctors and nurses telling him in the emergency room. "The sores were black. I'd never seen that before. I was shocked. I thought it was the black plague."

Williams' case illustrates how vulnerable individuals who go to poorly rated and understaffed nursing homes for rehabilitation can quickly succumb to preventable but lethal ailments like bedsores.

Code violations follow Arkansas landlord; records reveal history of shoddy properties, quick evictions

Theodore Thompson’s personal belongings are gone. His dogs, taken. His sense of security, wavering.

The trouble started when Thompson, 53, moved into a home on Parker Street in North Little Rock at the end of July. The four-bedroom, 1,527-square-foot house had a backyard, where his two dogs, Roscoe and Zeus, could run.

Before he moved in, Thompson looked through the house quickly and alone while his future landlord, Imran Bohra, waited with the car running.

Over the next several weeks, Thompson started noticing the problems with the house — the stove caught fire the first time he used it, there was a hole under the kitchen sink where a possum had taken residence, and the bathtub wasn’t properly sealed.

Regulators advised pulling patients from Hacienda HealthCare during 2016 fraud investigation

The Phoenix facility where a comatose patient was raped and gave birth faced a criminal investigation two years ago over allegations it billed the state more than $4 million in bogus charges.

Regulators with Arizona's social-welfare agency wanted to remove developmentally disabled patients from Hacienda HealthCare in 2016 and terminate contracts that allowed the facility to provide services for the state.

But the criminal case was dropped in 2017, and no charges were filed. The state's Medicaid agency later sought an order to force Hacienda to turn over financial records – a battle that continues in the courts.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office accused Hacienda's former chief executive officer in 2016 of refusing to turn over financial documents required by law even as he demanded the state pay higher fees for services.

The Unseen Driver Behind the Migrant Caravan: Climate Change

While violence and poverty have been cited as the reasons for the exodus, experts say the big picture is that changing climate is forcing farmers off their land – and it’s likely to get worse

Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty.

But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change.

Most members of the migrant caravans come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – three countries devastated by violence, organised crime and systemic corruption, the roots of which can be traced back to the region’s cold war conflicts.

Experts say that alongside those factors, climate change in the region is exacerbating – and sometimes causing – a miasma of other problems including crop failures and poverty.

BABY ANTONIO was born homeless.

He arrived at 12:29 a.m. on a warm Thursday in August. He was purple and perfectly formed, weighing all of 5 pounds and 12 ounces. He stretched his tiny arms and legs into the air as hospital staff hovered over him to count 10 toes and 10 fingers. His skin turned from purple to a light brown, and he cried, knowing nothing about his world.

There is a picture of homelessness etched in public perception: a solitary, disheveled man, begging on a crowded sidewalk, holding a cardboard sign. But the largest single population in New York City’s shelter system is children under the age of 6.

Infants carry a disruptive power. Their births can drive entire families to homelessness or lengthen their stays in a shelter.

“Pop quiz. At what age are you most likely to be homeless?” asked Allyson Crawford, chief executive of Room to Grow, a nonprofit that helps poor parents with newborns. “The answer is 1.”

Facebook Groups as Therapy

People are sharing their deepest secrets on Facebook. Does the social network understand what it’s gotten into?

It was Christopher’s therapist who suggested he look for help online. His wife had cheated on him, and he had been struggling since their divorce, but the $25 copays were adding up. His therapist proposed an online support group—free, discreet, available 24/7.

So he went, naturally, to Facebook, where a search turned up multiple private groups for people dealing with a partner’s infidelity. (Christopher had divorced his wife after finding out that their daughter was not his biological child. When I interviewed him, he asked that we withhold his real name.) From there, he got invitations to other support groups on Facebook, more targeted and even more specific: a group for families dealing with misattributed paternity, a group for children learning the same from DNA tests.