A Georgia real estate investor pleaded guilty today for his role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Georgia.

On January 3, 2014, the Director of National Intelligence declassified and disclosed publically that the U.S. government had filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and that, the FISC renewed that authority. The Office of the Director National Intelligence also announced that the Administration was undertaking a declassification review of the FISC's January 3 primary order. On February 12, 2014, and following a declassification review by the Executive Branch, the FISC released in redacted form the previously classified January 3 primary order it had issued in Docket Number BR 14-01, along with a number of other documents.

"We’re pleased that the court agreed that the department’s remedy will enhance system-wide competition in the airline industry," said Assistant Attorney General Baer

A federal jury convicted certified public accountant Jeffery Deshon Applewhite, aka Jeffrey Donald Mason, a resident of Los Angeles County, California, of 20 counts of aiding and assisting the preparation and presentation of false tax returns late yesterday.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Arne Duncan today announced updated guidance to assist public elementary and secondary schools to ensure enrollment processes are consistent with the law and fulfill their obligation to provide all children – no matter their background – equal access to an education.

Especially as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in which Chief Justice Earl Warren called education “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms,” it is imperative that we do everything in our power to end policies or practices that deny this right to those who are constitutionally entitled to it.

“For 27 years, Gina Talamona has been a tremendous asset to the Department of Justice and an exceptionally dedicated public servant. She’s been the backbone of our dedicated Office of Public Affairs team, providing leadership and sound guidance to Attorneys General and other leaders from administrations of both parties."

Dick Reid Jenkins, of Heber City, Utah, was convicted today, in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, of eighteen counts of filing false claims for income tax refunds and one count of presenting a fictitious financial instrument, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.

The Advisory Committee of the Attorney General’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence convenes its final public hearing in Anchorage, Alaska, today and tomorrow

The Departments of Justice and Education announced today that they have reached a comprehensive agreement with the Jefferson Parish Public School System in Louisiana (JPPSS) to ensure that all students can enroll in school regardless of their own national origin or immigration status, or that of their parents or guardians. The agreement also resolves complaints regarding JPPSS’ policies and practices for communicating with parents who have limited English proficiency (LEP) and JPPSS’ response to alleged harassment of Latino students based on their national origin

A federal court in East St. Louis, Illinois, permanently barred Ronald Manis, a certified public accountant, of Carbondale, Illinois, from engaging in certain conduct, the Justice Department announced today

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have extended the deadline for submitting comments on their recent Conditional Pricing Practices Workshop from Aug. 22, 2014, to Sept. 22, 2014

The Department of Justice has seized approximately $500,000 in assets traceable to corruption proceeds accumulated by Chun Doo Hwan, the former president of the Republic of Korea. This seizure brings the total value of seized corruption proceeds of President Chun to more than $1.2 million.

A federal jury returned guilty verdicts today against former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell and former First Lady of Virginia Maureen G. McDonnell for participating in a scheme to violate federal public corruption laws.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco returned an eight-count indictment against five real estate investors for their role in bid rigging and fraud schemes at foreclosure auctions in Northern California, the Department of Justice announced

A federal grand jury in San Francisco returned three multi-count indictments against eleven real estate investors for their role in bid rigging and fraud schemes at foreclosure auctions in Northern California, the Department of Justice announced

A Northern California real estate investor has agreed to plead guilty for his role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Northern California, the Department of Justice announced

A Northern California real estate investor has agreed to plead guilty for his role in bid rigging and fraud conspiracies at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Northern California, the Department of Justice announced

A Georgia real estate investor pleaded guilty today for his role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Fulton and DeKalb counties, Georgia

The federal government in March released a pair of long-awaited rules that will give patients greater access to their health data and improve the flow of information across care settings.

The spread of COVID-19 is placing unprecedented strain on Philadelphia’s hospitals, public health systems, and residents. Although the full effects of the emergency have yet to be realized, newly released data from 2018 and 2019 provides insight on the state of public health in the city before the pandemic.

This blog post was written by Deanna Petersen, CBO of AVROBIO, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. When AVROBIO went public in June 2018, I found myself on the steep end of an unexpected but interesting

The post Recipe For Managing Data Disclosure Successfully With Academic Partners: A Public Gene Therapy Company Perspective appeared first on LifeSciVC.

innoVactiv announces today its study supporting the efficacy of InSea2® to beneficially affect post-meal cognition and mental energy has been accepted for publication.

by ProPublica

The Pulitzer Board announced Monday that two series published by ProPublica were awarded Pulitzer Prizes. “Lawless,” a ProPublica Local Reporting Network project by the Anchorage Daily News that revealed how indigenous people in Alaska are denied public safety services, was awarded the prize for public service. “Disaster in the Pacific,” an investigation on the staggering leadership failures that led to deadly accidents in the Navy and Marines, won a national reporting prize. The two designations are ProPublica’s 6th Pulitzer win in 12 years and the first Pulitzer awarded to a Local Reporting Network partner.

Led by Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins, “Lawless” was the first comprehensive investigation to lay bare Alaska’s failing, two-tiered justice system in which Native villages are denied access to first responders. In much of rural Alaska, villages can only be reached by plane, and calling 911 to report an emergency often means waiting hours or days for help to arrive.

The series evolved from a string of stories that Hopkins reported in 2018 for the Daily News, recounting horrific incidents of sexual assault in Alaska — which has the nation’s highest rate of sexual violence — and policing failures that have allowed offenders to continue the abuse with impunity. To fully investigate issues of lawlessness and sexual assault in the most remote communities in the U.S., the Daily News applied to participate in ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. The program partners with newsrooms across the country, paying the salary and a stipend for benefits for local reporters who spend a year tackling big investigative stories that are crucial to their communities. Participating reporters work with a ProPublica senior editor and receive support, including from ProPublica’s data, research and engagement teams.

The collaboration’s first story, based on more than 750 public records requests and interviews, found that one in three rural Alaska communities has no local law enforcement of any kind. These indigenous communities are also among the country’s most vulnerable, with the highest rates of sexual assault, suicide and domestic violence. The series’ second major installment found that dozens of Alaska communities, desperate for police of any kind, hired officers convicted of felonies, domestic violence, assault and other offenses that would make them ineligible to work in law enforcement or even as security guards anywhere else in the country.

Next, Hopkins revealed how the state’s 40-year-old Village Public Safety Officer Program, designed to recruit villagers to work as life-saving first responders, has failed by every measure. Alaska had quietly denied funding for basic recruitment and equipment costs for these unarmed village officers while publicly claiming to prioritize public safety spending. “Lawless” also exposed how the Alaska State Troopers agency, created to protect Alaska Native villages, instead patrols mostly white suburbs surrounding cities on the road system like Wasilla. The series ended with a list of six practical solutions to Alaska’s law enforcement crisis, based on interviews with experts, village leaders, the Alaska congressional delegation and sexual assault survivors.

The Daily News and ProPublica faced a number of challenges in reporting the series. The first: No one knew which remote Alaska villages had police officers of any kind. So they built the first-ever statewide policing database by drawing on payroll, arrest and hiring records from communities spread across the state. They also contacted every village city government, sovereign tribal administrator and Alaska Native corporation in the state — more than 600 organizations.

The vastness of the state and the fact that 80% of communities aren’t on the road system posed another challenge. Journalists flew hundreds of miles, sleeping on the floors of schoolhouse libraries and riding in sleds and on snowmobiles. To aid the reporting, they also held a community meeting in Kotzebue, Alaska, where a 10-year-old girl had been raped and murdered in 2018, providing residents, advocates, tribal leaders and law enforcement their first chance for a public discussion on sexual violence. Throughout the year the reporters spoke to more than 300 people across the state.

Following publication of the first major story, U.S. Attorney General William Barr visited the state and declared the lack of law enforcement in rural Alaska to be a federal emergency. The declaration led the Department of Justice to promise more than $52 million in federal funding for public safety in Alaska villages. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage announced the hiring of additional rural prosecutors, while Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the state will post 15 additional state troopers in rural Alaska. In addition, the Alaska Police Standards Council has proposed changing state regulations that govern the hiring and screening of village police officers, and Alaska legislators proposed legislation that would increase pay for VPSOs and overhaul funding of the program.

The Daily News’ Loren Holmes, Bill Roth, Marc Lester, David Hulen, Anne Raup, Vicky Ho, Alex Demarban, Jeff Parrott, Michelle Theriault Boots, Tess Williams, Tegan Hanlon, Zaz Hollander, Annie Zak, Shady Grove Oliver and Kevin Powell, as well as ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein, Adriana Gallardo, Alex Mierjeski, Beena Raghavendran, Nadia Sussman, Lylla Younes, Agnel Philip, Setareh Baig and David Sleight also contributed to the series.

“The ProPublica Local Reporting Network was started to give local newsrooms across America the resources and support they need to execute investigative journalism that digs deep and holds power to account,” Ornstein, a ProPublica deputy managing editor, said. “This powerful collaboration with the Anchorage Daily News investigation does exactly that, going far beyond reporting on isolated incidents to provide meticulous research and context on how the justice system has failed Alaska’s most remote and vulnerable communities. Most importantly, it has been a force for real change.”

In their “Disaster in the Pacific” series, ProPublica reporters T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi centered on three deadly accidents in the Navy and Marines in 2017 and 2018. They exposed America’s vaunted 7th Fleet as being in crisis with broken ships and planes, poor training for and multiple warnings ignored by its commanders. The costs: 17 dead sailors in crashes involving Navy warships, and six Marines killed in a training accident.

The back-to-back accidents in 2017 and 2018 gained initial attention from Congress and the national media, but they had been told an incomplete, misleading and dangerous story of half-truths and cover-ups. ProPublica’s series provided the first full accounting of culpability, tracing responsibility to the highest uniformed and civilian ranks of the Navy. The reporting team spent 18 months on the investigation, obtaining more than 13,000 pages of confidential Navy records and interviewing hundreds of officials up and down the chain-of-command.

The first article in the series, “Fight the Ship,” reconstructed a 2017 crash involving the USS Fitzgerald, one of the deadliest accidents in the history of the Navy. The story showed that the accident was entirely preventable, and that the Navy’s senior leadership had endangered the warship by sending a shorthanded and undertrained crew to sea with outdated and poorly maintained equipment. To show readers what happened, ProPublica hired designer Xaquín G.V. Working with investigations producer Lucas Waldron, Xaquín used geodata on the ships’ locations, mapped the path of each vessel and created a graphic that simulated the crash, down to the moment the Fitzgerald was sent spinning out of control, rotating 360 degrees. The team also collected radar images, ship blueprints, hand-drawn images made by surviving sailors and video taken inside the ship, which allowed them to portray the disaster from the perspective of the sailors onboard.

A second story, “Years of Warnings, Then Death and Disaster,” detailed how the fatal crash of the USS Fitzgerald, and of the USS McCain weeks later, were the result of a congressional gutting of the Navy and the Navy’s prioritization of building new ships. Top Navy officials gave urgent, repeated warnings to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus about the deadly risks facing its fleet, including being short of sailors, sailors poorly trained and worked to exhaustion, warships physically coming apart, and ships routinely failing tests to see if they were prepared to handle warfighting duties. They were ignored, told to be quiet or even ordered to resign.

Another story captured the Marine Corps multiple failures that were responsible for the deaths of six men in a nighttime training exercise 15,000 feet above the Pacific — an accident that senior leaders had been warned was possible, even likely. ProPublica created an animated short documentary, using a combination of an on-camera interview, 3D animation, 2D illustration and atmospheric footage to bring the excruciating hours of a needless tragedy to light. Through extensive interviews with eyewitnesses, the team reconstructed the moments leading up to the crash, the crash itself and the botched search and rescue effort.

The series also illuminated how the Navy’s reckless management of the 7th Fleet was measured not only in fatalities, but also in the hurt and shame of the rank-and-file sailors whom the Navy blamed and prosecuted for the accidents. The Navy’s prosecution of Navy Cmdr. Bryce Benson for what were clearly systemic shortcomings, traceable all the way to the Pentagon, left many of its own furious and demoralized.

Weeks after the first story’s publication, the House Armed Services Committee convened a panel to challenge senior Navy leaders over their claims that they had been fully truthful about its failings and its efforts at reform. The reporting forced the Navy to admit to Congress that its claims about its rate of progress on reform were misleading. In light of ProPublica’s reporting on the improper role that the Navy’s top commander played in the prosecution of Benson, one of captains on the USS Fitzgerald, the Navy dropped all criminal charges. U.S. and NATO Navy commands throughout the world have ordered sailors and officers to read the ProPublica accounts as part of training and education.

Joseph Sexton, Tracy Weber, Agnes Chang, Katie Campbell, Joe Singer, Kengo Tsutsumi, Ruth Baron, David Sleight, Sisi Wei, Claire Perlman, Joshua Hunt and Nate Schweber also contributed to this series.

“The Navy actively blocked reporting at every step, with communications officers attempting to dissuade officials from conducting interviews with ProPublica and leaking positive stories to competing media outlets in an attempt to front-run our stories,” ProPublica Managing Editor Robin Fields said. “The military even threatened that we could be criminally prosecuted for publishing the material we obtained. This tour de force of investigative journalism is a testament to the unflinching tenacity of the reporters and the innovation of ProPublica’s data, graphics, research and design teams. Their essential work laid bare the avoidance of responsibility by the military’s most senior leaders.”

By Monday at least 31 states will be open or partially open. This as President Trump pushed for the country to get back to work despite public health experts warning that it's too soon.

Republicans, once confident of keeping their Senate majority in the fall election, now fear Democrats have a fresh advantage as the coronavirus crisis has reshaped campaigns.

After nearly seven hours of debate, Riverside County officials voted unanimously late Friday to rescind all of the county's stay-at-home orders that go beyond the governor's restrictions.

Some Buckeyes are not comfortable being told by a "woman in power" to quarantine, one expert said.

As I have written before, if India had been a start-up in August 1947 not even the most venturesome of venture capitalists would have invested in it. No new nation was born in more inhospitable circumstances. The Partition of the country had been awful enough, in the scale of its violence and the mass displacement [...]

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Nazarovets, Serhii Controversial practice of rewarding for publications in national journals., 2020 [Preprint]

Mar 5, 2020

The opening of the British archives has seen historians uncover the secrets of the UK's nuclear weapons programme since the 1990s. While a growing number have sought to expose these former secrets, there has been less effort to consider government secrecy itself. What was kept a secret, when and why? And how and why, notably from the 1980s, did the British government decide to officially disclose greater information about the British nuclear weapons programme to Members of Parliament, journalists, defence academics and the tax-paying general public. 

Mar 31, 2020

A nuclear explosion detonated anywhere by a terrorist group would be a global humanitarian, economic, and political catastrophe. The current COVID-19 pandemic reminds us not to ignore prevention of and preparation for low-probability, high-consequence disasters. For nuclear terrorism, while preparation is important, prevention must be the top priority. The most effective strategy for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is to ensure that nuclear materials and facilities around the world have strong and sustainable security. Every president for more than two decades has made strengthening nuclear security around the globe a priority. This includes the Trump administration, whose 2018 Nuclear Posture Review states: “[n]uclear terrorism remains among the most significant threats to the security of the United States, allies, and partners.”

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 29, 2020

In this piece, we will look at the various public purpose considerations as they relate to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for coronavirus. We explore the foreseeable risks to public safety of loosened regulation, ultimately arguing that even in times of crisis, accountable science and technology development is a choice we can make to protect the public and yield beneficial results, while considering both short- and long-term impacts. 

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 29, 2020

In this piece, we will look at the various public purpose considerations as they relate to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for coronavirus. We explore the foreseeable risks to public safety of loosened regulation, ultimately arguing that even in times of crisis, accountable science and technology development is a choice we can make to protect the public and yield beneficial results, while considering both short- and long-term impacts. 

Apr 29, 2020

In this piece, we will look at the various public purpose considerations as they relate to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for coronavirus. We explore the foreseeable risks to public safety of loosened regulation, ultimately arguing that even in times of crisis, accountable science and technology development is a choice we can make to protect the public and yield beneficial results, while considering both short- and long-term impacts. 

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 29, 2020

In this piece, we will look at the various public purpose considerations as they relate to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for coronavirus. We explore the foreseeable risks to public safety of loosened regulation, ultimately arguing that even in times of crisis, accountable science and technology development is a choice we can make to protect the public and yield beneficial results, while considering both short- and long-term impacts. 

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Apr 29, 2020

In this piece, we will look at the various public purpose considerations as they relate to the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for coronavirus. We explore the foreseeable risks to public safety of loosened regulation, ultimately arguing that even in times of crisis, accountable science and technology development is a choice we can make to protect the public and yield beneficial results, while considering both short- and long-term impacts. 

Apr 27, 2020

The authors conducted a study which highlights how the U.S. public as a whole and various demographic groups view President Donald Trump's positions on nuclear weapons.

Mar 5, 2020

The opening of the British archives has seen historians uncover the secrets of the UK's nuclear weapons programme since the 1990s. While a growing number have sought to expose these former secrets, there has been less effort to consider government secrecy itself. What was kept a secret, when and why? And how and why, notably from the 1980s, did the British government decide to officially disclose greater information about the British nuclear weapons programme to Members of Parliament, journalists, defence academics and the tax-paying general public. 

Mar 31, 2020

A nuclear explosion detonated anywhere by a terrorist group would be a global humanitarian, economic, and political catastrophe. The current COVID-19 pandemic reminds us not to ignore prevention of and preparation for low-probability, high-consequence disasters. For nuclear terrorism, while preparation is important, prevention must be the top priority. The most effective strategy for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is to ensure that nuclear materials and facilities around the world have strong and sustainable security. Every president for more than two decades has made strengthening nuclear security around the globe a priority. This includes the Trump administration, whose 2018 Nuclear Posture Review states: “[n]uclear terrorism remains among the most significant threats to the security of the United States, allies, and partners.”