FOIA lawsuits up 26 percent in Trump’s first year
Nearly a year since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the number of lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has hit an all time high — up 26 percent from fiscal year 2016.
Housing crisis: How we did the math
As part of our joint investigation into the affordable housing crisis, FRONTLINE and NPR took a closer look at the nation’s largest housing construction program for low-income renters — the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. Millions of families are what housing experts call “rent burdened,” meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their …
Big banks grow, every state hit hard since recession
Federally insured institutions as a whole continue to rebound since the Great Recession. Total assets, capital, deposits, profits and reserves have all collectively improved, according to an analysis of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) data by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, which looked at fourth-quarter FDIC data from December 2007 to December 2015 to get a …
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Behind the numbers: National Flood Insurance Program
As part of our joint investigation into the business of disaster recovery, FRONTLINE and NPR tried to determine how much profit the private insurance companies running the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) were making. FEMA pays fees to approximately 80 companies to sell and service flood policies, but claims are paid …
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Why have a national flood-insurance program?
The National Flood Insurance Program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Unlike other forms of homeowners’ insurance, the government pays roughly 80 private insurance companies’ fees to sell policies and settle claims. The premiums from those policies are meant to cover losses, but when a disaster becomes too costly, the taxpayers, not the …
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Are you handling raw chicken the wrong way?
Americans eat 8 billion chickens a year. That’s right — billion with a “B.” But about one in four pieces of raw chicken carry salmonella, and salmonella from poultry sickens 200,000 Americans a year, according to government data. Handling chicken properly and cooking it well is supposed to get rid of the salmonella. However, a …
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Two agencies, two standards: Would one be better?
Salmonella is banned in walnuts and tomatoes, but is still allowed in raw chicken. Could a new government agency bridge the divide in safety standards? When Trader Joe’s learned in March that bags of its walnuts may have contained salmonella, the grocery chain immediately recalled the product out of what it called “an abundance of …
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Salmonella still leading source of foodborne illness
Salmonella sickens more than 1 million Americans every year, with about 200,000 illnesses caused by contaminated poultry. Some strains of salmonella are becoming antibiotic resistant, making them more severe and difficult to treat. Key Findings of ‘The Trouble with Chicken’ investigation: Twenty years after the major E. coli 0157 outbreak from Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers highlighted the …
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Can we get to zero salmonella in poultry?
People may think that the chicken and turkey they buy at the grocery store is bacteria-free, but the government actually allows some salmonella in the raw poultry that’s sold to the public. Consumer advocates have been calling for zero tolerance of dangerous types of salmonella in poultry in order to cut down on the number …
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Europeans took action 20 years ago
While in the U.S. debate continues over whether there’s a connection between antibiotic resistance and the use of the drugs in food animals, in Europe, concern about the potential risk to human health has sparked legislative action dating back more than 20 years. It’s not that Europeans have different — or much clearer — science …
