News

The beer mugs were clinking on a mid-April afternoon at a hotel just off Capitol Hill.

They often do when members of the National Beer Wholesalers Association convene. The trade association’s annual legislative conference was stoked by two of the oldest ingredients in American politics -- alcohol and money.

A four-year international investigation into the backers of hundreds of child pornography Websites has identified 30,000 customers in 132 countries, led to hundreds of American convictions, and landed the ring running the sites in Eastern European jails.

Gerald Rudolph Ford, who steered the United States out of one of its greatest Constitutional crises, was a decent man destined to be remembered as the only president never elected on a national ticket.

By THOMAS HARGROVE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The rate at which state health departments are able to detect and diagnose outbreaks of food illness varies alarmingly in the United States.

Worst in the nation at finding outbreaks of food sickness is Kentucky, which reported only four outbreaks affecting 35 people over a five-year period, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of 6,374 food-sickness-outbreak reports to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kentucky's figures are especially suspicious since state labs reported at least 3,800 individuals contracted diseases like Salmonella, Campylobacter and E.

By TODD MILBOURN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The big green bins make big green promises: Donate old sneakers and help save a barrier reef. Give threadbare T-shirts and protect the mangroves. Offer out-of-style sweaters and support renewable energy.

More than 100 such bins have been set up alongside Sacramento, Calif.

By SRUTHI KUNNEL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Infectious intestinal diseases from food- and waterborne illnesses were diagnosed as the cause of death for 3,142 Americans in a one-year period, according to an analysis of death records provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The actual number of Americans who die from food poisoning is a matter of conjecture.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Here are findings from Scripps Howard News Service's study of 6,374 reports of food-borne illness received by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from Jan.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Scripps Howard News Service's study of how well America's public health departments handle food illness was based on a little-known annual report of outbreaks prepared by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

State health departments report an average of three or four outbreaks of food poisoning every day to the federal agency through the Electronic Food-borne Outbreak Reporting System, part of a nationwide computer-reporting network.

By THOMAS HARGROVE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
More than 50,000 people got sick or died from something they ate in a hidden epidemic that went undiagnosed by the nation's public health departments over a five-year period.

Americans play a sort of food-poisoning Russian roulette depending on where they live, an investigation by Scripps Howard News Service found.