The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) issued a report Friday saying formaldehyde, a common chemical found in clothing, homes and furniture, causes head and neck cancer (nasopharyngeal), nose cancer (sinonasal) and bone cancer (myeloid leukemia). The NAS findings supported other reports by American and international experts who have said the chemical is a danger to human health.   read more

The controversy centers around policy changes made at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which issues reports on so-called “hospital acquired conditions (HACs),” such as when surgeons accidentally leave sponges inside a patient’s body or a nurse causes air bubbles inside a person’s bloodstream. CMS has decided it will no longer disclose eight types of HACs that patient-safety advocates and consumers used to access.   read more

A group of 47 inspectors general (IGs) informed Congress that the Department of Justice, the Peace Corps and the Chemical Safety Board have at different times stymied the audits by IGs by not turning over important internal documents. With the Peace Corps, the agency reportedly withheld records of sexual assaults against its volunteers.   read more

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will for the first time publicize the amount of pollution being discharged from dams it operates in the Northwest. The change came about after an environmental group, Columbia Riverkeeper, successfully sued the Corps into agreeing to disclose the information and to submit to federal oversight by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has sought to oversee the dams run by the Corps.   read more

The government’s Terrorist Screening database includes names of 680,000 people, mostly foreign residents, who have been placed on watch lists. But more than 40% of those on the list have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation,” according to the documents, making it unclear why the government has to keep an eye on them.   read more

One hundred twenty current and former Secret Service agents are involved in the litigation, with eight lead plaintiffs. They claim they were passed over for higher pay grades from 1995 to 2005 under the Secret Service’s Merit Promotion Plan despite being qualified for promotions. The case has taken so long to go to trial in part because the government first contended the case shouldn’t have class-action status.   read more

Alexis Davis was found not guilty on two counts after jurors agreed with the defense that ATF entrapped the man with a second-grade reading level and an IQ of 59. “To me, this was not about fighting crime,” said juror Michael Lehman of St. Petersburg Beach. “There is a lot of crime going on in the world, you don’t need to manipulate the circumstances in order to encourage people to do bad things that they might or might not otherwise do.”   read more

Initiatives 88 and 89 are being pushed by Coloradans for Safe and Clean Energy, which wants to give local governments more control over where drillers can operate. The measures would also keep new oil and gas wells at least 2,000 feet from homes and schools. A recent poll showed that a majority of Coloradans support both initiatives.   read more

The steady increase in female incarceration can be attributed in large part to drug-related convictions. In the federal prison system, 57% of female inmates have a drug offense as their most serious offense, while the rate for male prisoners is 47%. Ohio officials say much of the increase they’ve seen in female inmates has been due to a rise in opioid use, with women also often used as drug mules.   read more

Murkowski was responsible for adding language last year to the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The reauthorization allowed tribal courts to prosecute non-Native Americans for domestic violence against Native partners in certain cases. Murkowski’s amendment exempted Alaska Native communities from that rule.   read more

In adopting the misleadingly named legislation, the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014, the House of Representatives wants to give U.S. carriers the power to advertise just the base cost of airline tickets, minus extras like taxes and airline fees. Airlines used to market their flights this way, until the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) approved a 2012 regulation, the Full Fare Advertising Rule, which mandated the industry advertise the total price consumers will pay for their flights.   read more

The Justice Department Office of the Inspector General has released a report blasting a DEA supervisor for violating the DEA’s own policy by beginning the investigation locally instead of reporting it to the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The actions of the supervisor, who was not named in the report, included having the two case officers responsible for Chong’s imprisonment gather evidence from his cell.   read more

Insisting the change will reduce the risk of food poisoning cases, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will let poultry companies inspect their own processing lines, instead of maintaining the current system of federal inspectors doing so. The switch will leave the industry responsible for spotting and removing diseased chickens and turkeys, as well as fecal matter from areas where birds are prepped for shipping to food producers.   read more

“Instead of firing someone, you force them out of government through criminal investigations or actual prosecutions that affect their prospects for future federal employment,” said Tom Devine. “It’s a dangerous, scary trend that’s likely to get worse. All a criminal investigation takes is one bully to give the suspect the third degree. The threat of jail [to a whistleblower] has a more chilling effect."   read more

The FBI's resumption of its investigation into tainted forensics evidence was ordered by the Office of the Inspector General, which made some alarming discoveries. Among other things, the IG discovered that three defendants had been executed and a fourth died on death row during the five years it took the FBI to reinvestigate 60 convictions that may have been tainted by improper conduct on the part of federal agents.   read more

The EPA has been faulted by a federal watchdog agency for failing to properly oversee hundreds of thousands of underground wells involving hydraulic fracturing. A new report by the GAO said the EPA has inconsistently performed safety inspections of fracking wells. EPA has also failed to maintain proper records for the wells and has not updated its guidelines for dealing with the fracking boom in the oil and gas industry.   read more