Florida Leaders Brace For Indictments
USA Today
Florida officials appear to have been the target of a broad FBI investigation, with a $500,000 budget funding undercover agents, intelligence analysts, an airplane, covert vehicles, surveillance equipment. USA Today reports that political gadflies are bracing for indictments. Despite Denial, Sen. Manchin Tied To Tax Owing Company
Washington Free Beacon
A spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) provided a false statement to a West Virginia newspaper in an attempt to cover up the senator's ties to a property company that owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes, the Free Beacon reports. Farmer Fined $1.1 Million For Plowing Field
Washington Times
When it rains on California farmland owned by John Duarte, the water sometimes gathers on top of the gravelly clay soil, forming vernal pools. Although the pools soon evaporate the government declared them "navigable waters." Now he's spending $1.1 million to get the feds off his back. They Got Hurt At Work, Then They Got Deported
ProPublica and NPR
Illegal immigrants who are hurt on the job in Florida are more likely to get deported than to receive treatment or compensation for their injuries. Since a 2003 state law made it a crime to file for workers compensation with false identification, undocumented workers have found that a visit to the doctor can land them in jail. Screening Nearly Eliminates Down Syndrome in Iceland
CBS News
Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women -- close to 100 percent -- who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy. About two babies are born with Down Syndrome per year in the Nordic nation, compared to the six thousand in the United States. Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Slow Chemical Dissolve
Wired
A growing belief that burial poses environmental hazards and cremation is "cruel," has led some advocates and scientists to imagine new ways of handling the dead - including dissolving their remains. Hayley Campbell focuses on one such effort led by of Dean Fisher, director of the Donated Body Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Since March 2012 he has been experimenting with a cutting-edge machine, one of only three in the United States. | 
