Nearly 20 years ago, Ronnie Rollins walked out of a hotel in Macon, Georgia, with an idea that he believed might lead the state’s struggling rural nursing homes to financial salvation.

State health officials had just told a conference filled with industry players about a federal program that would dramatically increase payments for care provided to nursing home residents. But there was a catch: To obtain the bonus money, the nursing home had to be owned by a public agency affiliated with a hospital.

Rollins owned a chain of nursing homes and didn’t seem to qualify for the program. But he dreamed up a workaround...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 22, 2020
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A finales de abril, cuando COVID-19 corría en las plantas empacadoras de carne, enfermando y matando a sus empleados, el presidente Donald Trump emitió una controvertida orden ejecutiva que tuvo el objetivo de mantenerlas abiertas para que siguieran suministrando alimentos a los consumidores estadounidenses.

La orden fue un alivio para las empacadoras de carne del país que recibían alertas u ordenes de suspender la producción, de parte de funcionarios de salubridad locales preocupados por la expansión del coronavirus.

Sin embargo, los correos electrónicos que obtuvo ProPublica revelan que, posiblemente, la industria de la carne tuvo algo que ver en el rescate que le brindó la Casa Blanca: justo una semana antes de que se emitiera la orden, el grupo comercial de la industri...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 21, 2020
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Heather Steadman, a nurse at a CSL Plasma donation center near Pittsburgh, was about to enter a tiny closed-door room to administer an exam when the doctor handed her a mask in a translucent wrapper labeled KN95. The folded white mask, visible behind Chinese characters, was all her employer was providing to protect her from COVID-19.

Over a nearly 20-year career, she’d worn certified respirators in intensive care units and cared for patients dying from respiratory disease...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 21, 2020
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Over the past few weeks, the West erupted in flames. The lucky among us know this from the news: 3.2 million acres burned in California, 1 million acres burned in Oregon, more than 900,000 acres burned in Washington. Words often fail as those words just failed — to communicate what these fires are actually like up close. Photographs often do better at capturing the drama and emotion. But the pictures that run in news outlets represent a tiny subset of what happens during a wildfire. What we see, and don’t see, shapes what we think about fire. And what we think about fire shapes fire policy...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 21, 2020
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Al finalizar el pasado lunes, el gobierno estadounidense deportó a una testigo crucial de una investigación en curso relacionada con alegatos de agresión y hostigamiento sexual en un centro de detención de inmigración de El Paso, Texas, dijeron los abogados de la testigo.

La mujer, de 35 años, estuvo detenida en esas instalaciones supervisadas por la oficina de Cumplimiento de Inmigración y Aduanas (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE), durante aproximadamente un año...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 19, 2020
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The Illinois Associated Press Media Editors announced this week that “The Quiet Rooms” series, a collaboration between ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune, won four awards in the Illinois APME 2019 newspaper contest. This year, three newspaper divisions competed in more than 20 categories including General Excellence and Sweepstakes.

The investigation, by ProPublica Illinois reporter Jodi S...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 18, 2020
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Dennis Mouser walked into Anchorage police headquarters on Sept. 2, 1987, for an interview he had requested with a detective.

By the time he walked out, he had admitted to sexually assaulting his stepdaughter Sherri on at least two occasions when she was 10. He’d also exposed himself to her, he told police.

It was the second time Mouser had asked police to interview him and the second time he described entering his stepdaughter’s room naked. A detective recorded his statement. Then he left the station.

A lifetime passed.

In June, Sherri Stewart, 44, looked into her iPad at the face of Kar...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 18, 2020
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In May 2019, workers in California’s Central Valley struggled to seal a broken oil well. It was one of thousands of aging wells that crowd the dusty foothills three hours from the coast, where Chevron and other companies inject steam at high pressure to loosen up heavy crude. Suddenly, oil shot out of the bare ground nearby.

Chevron corralled the oil in a dry streambed, and within days the flow petered out. But it resumed with a vengeance a month later. By July, a sticky, shimmering stream of crude and brine oozed through the steep ravine.

Workers and wildlife rescuers couldn’t immediately approach the site — it was 400 degrees underground, a...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 18, 2020
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Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 18, 2020
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For months, one postal worker had been doing all she could to protect herself from COVID-19. She wore a mask long before it was required at her plant in St. Paul, Minnesota. She avoided the lunch room, where she saw little social distancing, and ate in her car.

The stakes felt especially high. Her husband, a postal worker in the same facility, was at high risk because his immune system is compromised by a condition unrelated to the coronavirus. And the 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service knew that her job, operating a machine that sorts mail by ZIP code, would be vital to processing the flood of mail-in ballots expected this fall.

By mid...

Posted in پروبابلیکا
on سپتامبر 18, 2020
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