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FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS
DEBTCOLLECTION (Wolf, SHNS) -- More Americans are complaining that debt collectors are using shady and possibly illegal practices to hound them for payments, a Scripps Howard investigation has found. Complaints this year to federal authorities about unscrupulous debt collectors are on pace to be more than 6 percent higher than two years ago. 1,050.
DEBT-NCO (Wolf, SHNS) -- Four hundred million times a year, employees of a little-known company called NCO dial the telephone "just to talk." NCO's hope: A simple chat will convince people to pay old debts. "We have to strike a bond with someone," said the company's CEO, Michael Barrist. 750.
DEBT-SURVEY (Wolf, SHNS) -- Forty percent of Americans report that debt collectors have threatened them or their families with violence, otherwise harassed them or called at inappropriate times, according to a Scripps Howard survey. A 1977 federal law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, prohibits debt collectors from engaging in such actions. 575.
DEBT-YOURRIGHTS (Wolf, SHNS) -- When the debt collectors come calling, know your rights. Collection companies are governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a federal law. 725.
EDDEBTCOLLECTION (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- Thanks to a stubbornly persistent recession, millions of Americans find themselves saddled with debt that they can't repay or can repay only with such difficulty it discourages them from even trying. 375.
DEAD WRONG: WHAT'S REALLY KILLING AMERICA
DEATH-DIAGNOSIS (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Hundreds of thousands of death certificates filed every year in the United States are wrong, meaning we don't really know what's killing Americans. The erroneous death certificates cause medical researchers to look at the wrong health threats, and mislead people to the real diseases that run in their families. Results of a seven-month investigation into federal mortality records. 1,300.
DEATH-AUTOPSY (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- A first-of-its-kind study has found that younger, well-educated and wealthy people are more likely to be autopsied when they die. More men than women are autopsied. And blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans are more likely to be autopsied than whites. 1,300.
DEATH-DIAGSIDE (Bowman, SHNS) -- Completing the document that marks the end of every American's life can take extraordinary amounts of time and persistence for both funeral providers and medical professionals. The quality of training on how to document death varies considerably. 400.
DEATH-POLL (Nunez and Hargrove, SHNS) -- A significant number of Americans distrust what's written on death certificates -- those official documents that report when, where, how and why people die. A survey of 946 people by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that 26 percent doubt official cause of death for someone they know personally. 900. With DEATHPOLL-CHART1 and DEATHPOLL-CHART2.
DEATH-HOWTO (Bowman, SHNS) -- If you're not sure that the true cause of death of a loved one has been determined and properly recorded on a death certificate, what can be done? 500. With DEATH-HOWTOSIDE
DEATH--HEARTCHART (SHNS) -- State-by-state chart showing varying averages for deaths blamed on coronary disease.
DEATHAUTOPSYCHART (SHNS) -- State-by-state chart showing the rate at which deaths are autopsied.
EDDEATH-DIAGNOSIS (McFeatters, SHNS) -- Editorial: A Scripps Howard News Service study of revealed a disturbing conclusion: Our knowledge of what's killing Americans is not terribly accurate, which greatly complicates the cause of prevention. 400.
DEADWRONG-AUTOPSY (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Amid widespread concern over the accuracy of death records, medical experts are calling on Congress to do something unprecedented: define what legally constitutes an autopsy. "From the public health standpoint, absolutely, we could use standards for autopsies," said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics. 900.
DEADWRONG-SIDE (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Dan Close wishes his family had insisted on an autopsy after his father, 69-year-old Darrell D. Close, died last year. Emergency medical technicians and police were summoned to Darrell Close's home in Wichita, Kan., after family members found him unresponsive. "It was a shoddy deal. The doubts raised in the Close case are common. 550.
EDAUTOPSY-FIX (McFeatters, SHNS) -- Strange as it may seem to a layperson, there is no legal definition of what constitutes an autopsy. 400.
DEAD WRONG: WHAT'S REALLY KILLING NEW YORK
DEATH-FRAUD (Hargrove, SHNS) -- A six-month investigation by Scripps Howard News Service found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers died in recent years with the wrong cause on their official death certificates. 1,200.
FRAUD-SIDE (Hargrove, SHNS) -- The problems with New York's death records are nothing new. They were mentioned in a newspaper article way back in '72 -- that's 1872. 200.
FRAUD-METHOD (Hargrove, SHNS) -- A closer look at how the SHNS investigation was done. 200.
RECYCLED RADIATION
RAD-MAIN (Wolf, SHNS) -- Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactively tainted metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world. But because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination, no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation. 2,800.
RAD-HOTPOTATO (Wolf, SHNS) -- No one is in charge of protecting Americans from products made from radioactively tainted metal, and the case of a radioactive cheese grater illustrates the lack of oversight. 1,000.
RAD-NODUMP (Wolf, SHNS) -- Since last summer, 36 states have had nowhere to dump the radioactively tainted metal, material and products that have surfaced within their borders. 350.
RAD-RECOVERY (Wolf, SHNS) -- The U.S. government's only effort to hunt down castoff radioactive items has recovered just 4 percent of the estimated 500,000 tainted metal products and material unaccounted for across the country-- and it has a two-year backlog. 500.
RAD-INDIANA (Wolf, SHNS) -- Though few knew it at the time, an Indiana manufacturer unknowingly used metal blended with a dangerous radioactive isotope to make parts for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners a decade ago, triggering a government effort to keep the chairs out of American living rooms. 1,200.
RAD-FLORIDA (Wolf, SHNS) -- A Florida metal-processing plant inadvertently melted a radioactive item -- creating 1.4 million pounds of contaminated waste and posing potential health threats to metal-plant workers and the environment. 900.
RAD-CALIF (Wolf, SHNS) -- A quarter-century after two Mexican foundries produced thousands of pounds of radioactive metal, the contaminated material continued to cross the U.S. border and reach California. 850.
RAD-SOLUTIONS (Wolf, SHNS) -- Requiring scrap yards and recycling facilities to use radiation monitors and to report every time they detect low-level radioactive materials are just two of the measures experts say would protect us better from contact with contaminated metal and products. 250.
RAD-TENN (Wolf, SHNS) -- An obscure government database lists 880 instances in which radioactive metals have found their way into Tennessee scrap yards, trash dumps and recycling facilities. 1,000.
RAD-TEXAS (Wolf, SHNS) -- For more than a month in the summer of 2006, a metal recycler in Longview, Texas, produced half-a-million pounds of radioactive material, state and federal documents show. 1,120.
EDRADIATION (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- The hidden radiation around us. 450.
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