California regional centers spend without public scrutiny
November 21, 2010 | The Sacramento Bee | SACRAMENTO, Calif. — While the state weighed billions in social services cuts to bridge a gaping budget deficit, tax records show one state-funded nonprofit group paid its president a salary of $520,000 to oversee the housing and care of several dozen people with developmental disabilities. Download […] more…
California housing for developmentally disabled has high cost
January 2, 2011 | The Sacramento Bee | SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Bee investigation has found that the Inland Regional Center overspent on real estate because it paid above-market rates for new construction, issued no bid contracts and paid rent on an empty headquarters building. more…
China’s startups hope for boom after Alibaba IPO
June 11, 2014 | The Associated Press | BEIJING – China might seem an odd choice for young tech entrepreneurs. Instead of innovation and risk taking, the country is more associated with state domination of the economy, rampant intellectual property theft and heavy duty government censorship of social media. more…
Secret historians preserve past in China amid state amnesia
March 11, 2015 | The Associated Press | BEIJING – Xu Xing and other secret historians have taken it upon themselves to preserve photos, interview eyewitnesses and do the archival work that the Chinese government has banned most historians inside the country from doing. more…
A lonely, agonizing search for missing kids in China
December 27, 2014 | The Associated Press | BEIJING – Zhang Xiuhong and her husband have since searched all over China for Yao Li, hoping to rescue her from a child trafficking industry that swallows up thousands of boys and girls every year. Along the way, the couple have also been harassed, arrested and jailed […] more…
Chinese art colony’s free-speech illusion shatters.
October 17, 2014 | The Associated Pres | BEIJING – In a tightly controlled society where dissent is quickly squashed, the artists of Songzhuang appeared to be enjoying a rarely seen degree of creative and political freedom. But then, on Oct. 1, that illusion was shattered. more…
Hong Kong at a crossroads
July 26, 2014 | The Associated Press | HONG KONG — As skyscrapers around Hong Kong harbor erupted into a reverie of laser beams and giant digital displays during their synchronized nightly light show, one innocuous 28-story building near the water’s edge had stayed dark for months, clad in bamboo scaffolding for a face-lift. more…
China’s carbon goal a tough sell in coal country
December 2, 2014 | The Associated Press | TANG COUNTY, China – Just a few dozen miles from the capital of Beijing, in Hebei province, coal use has long been a way of life, with countless house-sized mounds of it dotting the forest floor. more…
Visiting Egypt in turmoil
September 9, 2013 | The Associated Press | CAIRO — More than two years of political turmoil in Egypt have devastated the country’s tourism industry. But for the traveler with a stomach for instability, visiting the country during a lull in the violence offered a glimpse into both Egypt’s modern and ancient history. more…
Retreating and resetting at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
September 4, 2015 | The Sacramento Bee | MUIR BEACH, Calif. – We had escaped, just for a moment, from the bustling modern world and all its distractions to a pocket of peace and simplicity here amid the pines of the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center deep in the hills of Marin County. more…
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