Obama-Era Science Experts Are Working in the Shadows
Stat
Nearly all of the Obama administration's science staff has left the White House since January, but some haven't gone far, as the Trump administration has moved slowly to replace them. An unofficial shadow office stocked with Obama loyalists is quietly at work, advocating their ex-boss's agenda on climate change and other issues. "It is certainly true that MANY of the former OSTP staffers are working, in a variety of ways, to fill the void," said John Holdren, who led Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Me, too." America's Hidden Spy Planes
BuzzFeed News
Using a machine-learning algorithm to sift aviation data for distinctive flight patterns, BuzzFeed finds that U.S. airspace has been buzzing with military and police planes tracking drug traffickers, testing new spying technology -- even hovering above the Republican National Convention. The findings seem sure to trigger concerns about both privacy and the security of operational methods. The Secret World of Global Food Spies
Bloomberg Technology
Food scandals in China over the past decade — from melamine-laced baby formula to rat-meat "lamb" — demonstrate that the planet's largest food-producing and consuming nation is a hotbed of counterfeit and contaminated food. So now a network of "food spies" scours supply chains around the world hunting food industry fraud and malpractice. 51 Deaths in North Carolina County Jails
News & Observer
Fifty-one inmates died in North Carolina's county jails in the past five years after being left unsupervised for longer than state regulations allow, an investigation shows. Jailers failed to make timely checks, left in place sheets or towels that prevented them from seeing suicide attempts, or didn't fix broken cameras or intercoms. The deaths happened in 38 different jails, in rural and urban areas. Evidence-Disclosure Rules Behind Guilty Pleas
Marshall Project
In criminal courts, 10 states including New York have discovery rules that allow prosecutors to wait until just before trial to turn over evidence to defense lawyers. That leaves defendants with a high-stakes dilemma: accept a plea bargain without seeing all the evidence, or risk a trial ending in a worse sentence. Perhaps understandably, most cop a plea. Unjust? Defendant advocates think so. But prosecutors have a different priority: the safety of witnesses. Chicago SWAT Teams Used on Mental Health Calls
The Intercept
Since 2013, Chicago police have deployed SWAT teams at least 38 times to respond to mental health incidents and suicide attempts, according to deployment logs. As militarized responses dealt with troubled individuals, Chicago closed half its public mental health clinics due to cutbacks and privatization. "Armored teams of cops have become expensive hammers in search of nails," this article concludes. The Doctor Who Claims He Can 'Reverse' Abortions
Vice News
An investigation into what Vice News calls the troubling rise of the anti-abortion movement's latest cause: trying to reverse abortions in progess by prescribing the hormone progesterone to reverse the effect of mifepristone, the initial pill taken in medical abortions, while skipping the second, contraction-inducing pill normally taken 24 to 48 hours later. A San Diego doctor claims to have "successfully reversed" 350 medical abortions in this way. But the article concludes these successes are likely an accident of statistics rather than medicine. | 
