Inmates in private prisons spent 4% to 7% longer incarcerated after accounting for type of crime and length of original sentence. That amounted to 60 to 90 days longer for the average inmate. Private prisons are paid by states on a per-diem basis, meaning a set amount for each day a prisoner is incarcerated. That means the corporations running the prisons are incentivized to keep prisoners longer. This is accomplished by increasing the number of infractions per inmate.   read more

The 2015 Women’s Media Center report shows that women fill only 30% to 40% of positions in the news business. Women produce only 37.3% of news in the U.S. The numbers are even worse in TV news. Women comprise only 32% of news anchors or reporters. Women are most likely to be producers, but as the prestige of a producing job increased, the likelihood of it being filled by a woman fell. On Sunday television talk shows, women comprised only 14% of those interviewed and 29% of roundtable guests.   read more

Generic drug makers and public health experts oppose this TPP provision because, they say, it will result in higher drug prices and make it harder for patients to receive needed treatments. “It was very clear to everyone except the U.S. that the initial proposal wasn’t about transparency. It was about getting market access for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them greater access to and influence over decision-making processes around pricing and reimbursement,” said Deborah Gleeson.   read more

The problem with using ICAO regulations as a model, say critics, is ICAO is too cozy with the industry and likely to produce weak rules. "Airplane carbon pollution is skyrocketing, but the EPA is still dodging responsibility,” said attorney Vera Pardee. “Passing the buck to an international organization that’s virtually run by the airline industry won’t protect our planet from these rapidly growing emissions.” Some urge the EPA to adopt standards now and let the ICAO use them as a model.   read more

“It’s staggering,” said Dr. Matthew Miller, an epidemiologist and suicide expert at Northeastern University. “We have to come to grips with why the rates are so obscenely high.” Researchers can’t say for sure why female veterans have such a high suicide rate. One reason might be that women who join the military might disproportionately have a higher risk of suicide, or that sexual assaults and other traumatic experience might come into play, the Times’ Alan Zarembo wrote.   read more

Coal companies and officials from 14 states filed a lawsuit to stop the EPA from adopting its plan to limit the production of greenhouse gases from power plants. “But EPA has not yet issued a final rule," wrote Judge Brett Kavanaugh in his opinion. "It has issued only a proposed rule. Petitioners nonetheless ask the court to jump into the fray now. They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule.”   read more

A new study has found that some Medicare Advantage plans make their patients seem sicker than they are in order to overbill the federal government to the tune of $2 billion a year. Enrollees have 6% to 16% higher diagnosis-based risk scores than they would have had if they were in traditional Medicare. As a result, the plans are more profitable for the insurance companies and the extra money allows them to offer more benefits, making them more attractive than regular Medicare.   read more

“The lawsuit, which seeks no monetary damages, is described by the [suit] as an attempt to break through the secrecy surrounding drone strikes," said the Times. The plaintiffs referenced President Obama’s recent revelation that a U.S. strike in Pakistan had accidentally killed an American and an Italian hostage. “The president has now admitted to killing innocent Americans and Italians with drones," says the suit. "Why are the bereaved families of innocent Yemenis less entitled to the truth?”   read more

Nationwide, abortions are down 12% since 2010, but in Michigan and Louisiana, both states that have enacted abortion restrictions, the number of such procedures has increased significantly. The increases—up 18.5% in Michigan and 12% in Louisiana—are at least partly because those states adjoin others where abortions are even more tightly restricted.   read more

Twitter is no longer allowing the Sunlight Foundation to collect deleted tweets from politicians. The Sunlight Foundation created Politwoops to help keep politicians honest about what they say on Twitter, even when what they say is no longer there.   read more

At the Sandia National Laboratory, officials had included classified nuclear weapon design information on a server able to be accessed by the public for years. They even gave PowerPoint demonstrations from 2003 to 2011 that exposed the information to outside groups and handed out computer disks with the demo.   read more

Alameda is the first county in the nation to make drug manufacturers pay at least a part of the cost of encouraging people to do the right thing and giving them a means to do it. That means setting up collection points, publicizing the locations and disposing of the drugs.   read more

During the trial, though, Drake’s lawyers contended that the Pentagon’s inspector general destroyed evidence related to the case. That prompted the judge who oversaw the trial, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bennett, to ask another judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher, to investigate the accusations. On May 13 she sent a letter to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section requesting that they weigh in on the matter. She gave them until June 12 to respond.   read more

The decentralization plan is currently included in the Senate’s version of the $612 billion bill that funds the Pentagon. Contained in section 843, the provision is supposedly intended to speed up the procurement of weapons by giving the commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines more power to make decisions on weapons purchases, which would be at the expense of the defense secretary. But the White House has made clear its opposition and willingness to veto the legislation.   read more

Despite recent high-profile police killings of unarmed civilians, there are no official numbers on how often this happens. That question has been left to outsiders, such as The Washington Post, which found nearly 400 people—armed and unarmed—have been killed by police officers so far this year. Justice statisticians also don’t know how many prisoners are locked away in solitary confinement. Nor can the Justice Department say how many non-sexual assaults occur in the prison system.   read more

Wikileaks says the 26 chapters are kept under wraps by corporations that have been given access to what the group calls a “monster trade pact.” Said Wikileaks: “The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty.”   read more