By Dan Christensen
FloridaBulldog.org
For two terms, Florida’s feeble blind trust law has let Gov. Rick Scott stash his tens of millions of dollars in stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and oil and gas partnerships mostly out of sight and in friendly hands.
By Rick Schmitt and Stuart Silverstein, FairWarning
Owen Ouyang
On a Saturday night in early December, while relaxing at his Martinez, Calif., home, Chinese exchange student Owen Ouyang decided to have some fun. He went out to the front yard and launched a sleek new drone he had recently purchased online for about $1,000.
The 2.8-pound drone, advertised as “easy to fly,” proved anything but. Soon after takeoff, the drone veered dangerously toward a power line. It then climbed more than 700 feet – right into the path of a California Highway Patrol helicopter. A head-on collision was averted only after the chopper’s crew made a sharp right-hand turn at the last moment.
By Kara Bradeisky and Sisi Wei, ProPublica
The Senate began investigating the CIA’s detainee program nearly six years ago. It completed a draft of its report two years ago. Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally released the report’s blistering executive summary. (The full report remains classified.) What took so long? It’s a tale of White House indecisiveness, Republican opposition, and CIA snooping.
By Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica
National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans’ phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies.
But secrecy around the programs has meant even basic questions are still unanswered. Here’s what we still don’t know:
