Local reporters can use NASA data for stories on weather events, groundwater, wildfires, conservation and more

Data from NASA satellites can add reliable, science-based 
insights to local reporting. (NASA graphic)

Environmental journalists seeking data on planet Earth can dig into troves of NASA information. "NASA actually flies its own Earth-exploring satellites, which collect massive amounts of data in their own right," reports Joseph A. Davis for the Society of Environmental Journalists.

And while the Trump administration succeeded in hacking off a massive portion of the agency's budget, NASA has been busy improving its data site. . .anyway.

The agency now boasts a "nifty refurbished site called Earthdata. NASA says the upgrade — which they call the web unification project — will take the rest of 2026," Davis explains. "It looks better already, because it’s organized by what you are looking for. It’s no longer rocket science."

Davis adds the following "treasures" for reporters looking for environmental data that is gathered in space but grounded in science. 

• Groundwater: NASA offers several datasets that measure groundwater depletion. It also measures land subsidence from depletion.
• Cryosphere: NASA data tells about snow cover, sea ice extent, ice thickness, permafrost, snow and ice albedo (reflectivity), glacier loss, ice sheets and more.
• Land Surface: Satellites are telling us about shrinking forests, warming land, soil erosion, vegetation types, land use, topography, soil moisture, wildfires, floods and landslides.
• Atmosphere: Satellites tell us much about Earth’s 60-mile-thick atmosphere, including pollutants like particulates, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, dust and smoke. . . .weather-related data.
• Biosphere: Satellites measure vegetation types, vegetation extent and condition, canopy height, deforestation, habitat types and conditions, biomass types, conservation of protected areas, algal blooms, nighttime lights and more.
• Ocean: Most of what NASA satellites see is water. They send back data on sea surface temperature, salinity, ocean color, sea surface height (for ENSOs), nutrients, chlorophyll, ocean currents, sea level rise, biogeochemical cycles, waves and winds, nutrients and tsunamis.
• Human Dimensions: Satellites see what humans do to the planet, including agricultural practices, housing development, and land and water management.

Green 'hackers' rescue, repost environmental research data tools for public use

A screenshot of a rescued EPA data mapping tool.  
(PEDA website image via SEJ Toolbox)

Green geeks deploy their techy-search-and-rescue powers to help environmental science research get back online.

"As environmental data goes missing, these are times when hackers can be heroes to journalists. Meet Public Environmental Data Partners," writes Joseph A. Davis of SEJ Toolbox. "It’s a loose coalition of programmers and developers who are reversing the Trump administration’s removal of politically inconvenient data from the internet. . . . Once the data is rescued, they put it into usable form — searchable, visible, map-formatted and downloadable."

Where did the data come from? The content was originally on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website, but a few months ago, it disappeared. That helpful EJScreen data tool? Gone. "Well, gone from the website of the but not from the web," Davis adds. "A group called the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, better known as EDGI, preserved the data before it vanished, and Public Environmental Data Partners set up the interface for using it. Toolbox applauds."

Public Environmental Data Partners has worked on several data rescue missions. Their growing list is here. Davis writes, "The list includes lots of Energy Department data: the Energy Justice Dashboard, the Wind Energy Community Benefits Database, etc. It includes pipeline data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. . . . And more. Not all are gone yet and not all are back online yet, but they are working on it."

Groups contributing to the Public Environmental Data Partners include:
The CAFE Research Coordinating Center at Harvard and Boston University
The Catalyst Cooperative
Earth Hacks
The End of Term Web Archive
Environmental Policy Innovation Center
Fulton Ring
Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)
Open Environmental Data Project
Rooted Futures Lab

"A lot of things containing the word climate are disappearing," Davis writes. "But they do not sleep silently with the fishes. Data wants to be free."

This small town's residents battled over a giant data center campus. It's a drama happening across rural America.

Giant tech companies often seek out data-center land in
rural towns. The sites feed the AI industry.

When big tech companies look for cheap land and energy to house and feed giant data campuses, they often shop in rural America. In the small town of Peculiar, Missouri, many residents worked to reject a data center proposal by developer Diode Ventures, which represented a secret corporate tech giant.

Their refusal to allow the land planned for the data site to be rezoned pitted residents against each other and their town officials, reports Eli Tan of The New York Times. "Residents described a web of distrust filled with nondisclosure agreements, hurt feelings and a mysterious entity vying to become the town’s new neighbor."

Executives from Diode Ventures plied residents and town officials with promises of an economic "boon," but some folk weren't sure. Becky Wiseman, whose property would border the Peculiar site, and her neighbors "decided to visit data center campuses for Meta and Google in Nebraska and Iowa, which were also 'hyperscale' like the one proposed in Peculiar," Tan writes. "When they arrived, they were terrified at what they saw and heard — the constant hum of generators behind guard towers."

With that, the stage for a David and Goliath battle between concerned residents and Diode supporters was set. "Signs that read 'No Data Centers' sprouted up in yards and windows across town," Tan reports. "So many people started showing up at planning and zoning meetings that Peculiar officials had to move them from City Hall to the Lions Club, a larger venue a mile down the road."

Diode executives were caught off-guard by some of the town's intense resistance. "Behind the scenes, Diode had been working with Peculiar’s mayor, Doug Stark, and city administrator, Mickey Ary," Tan explains. "Over virtual meetings and lunches at City Hall with Stark and Ary, Diode executives laid out a plan to win over Peculiar’s hearts and minds."

Proposal debates and bickering raged on in Peculiar until the aldermen voted this past September. "By unanimous decision, the data center zoning was rejected. It is unclear where Diode will take its project," Tan reports. But Peculiar's conflict isn't unique. The same saga is "playing out in small towns across the country as tech giants look to build hundreds of new data centers — often lured by tax abatements — to house the thousands of computers that would power the booming and energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry."

Friday webinar will teach you how to use free Google Tools to punch up your business and data reporting and graphics

A hands-on digital workshop on Friday, May 13, aims to teach journalists how to use free Google Tools to strengthen your reporting. The workshop goes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET and costs $10. It's presented by a partnership of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Google News Initiative and is sponsored by the Mid-America Press Institute. Click here for more information or to register.

From the website: "In this hands-on workshop, SPJ Google News Lab trainer Mike Reilley will show you how to use free Google tools that can help your newsroom build interactive charts, maps, visualizations and more. Tools we’ll cover: Google Flourish, Google Dataset Search, Google Fact Check Explorer, Google Trends, MapChecking.com, Google Earth Studio, Earth Engine Timelapse, Public Data Explorer, advanced search, data scraping with Google Sheets and Google Flourish. Prior to the session, set up a free account at http://flourish.studio. Participants will receive handouts with exercises, links to tools and more."

Using those programs, Reilley will teach participants easier ways to scrape data from websites or PDFs and turn it into graphics (some interactive); how to scrape and track both real-time and historic stock-market data; and how to tell visual stories with satellite data, maps, and more.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Set up a free Google Earth Studio account as soon as possible, since Google must approve applications before granting access.

Thursday, April 28 webinar will show how to read USDA's baseline agricultural projections for the next decade

The Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service provides critical data products, from the Farm Income Forecast to international crop trade trends, to poverty and hunger data. A new series of training webinars will teach you how to find them, their significance, and how to use them. The next one, at 1 p.m. ET Thursday, April 28, covers how to interpret baseline agricultural projections. From its page:

"The USDA Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee develops long-term agricultural projections, also referred to as 'baseline' projections, that provide a scenario for the U.S. farm sector and global trade for the next 10 years. Projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of each sector (such as farm income). The projections identify major forces and uncertainties affecting future agricultural markets; prospects for global long-term economic growth, consumption, and trade; and future price trends and trade flows of major farm commodities. In this webinar, ERS agricultural economist Matthew Miller will discuss how the projections are made and used, provide highlights from the recent projections, and demonstrate how to find the data on the ERS website.

Click here for more information or to register for the April 28 webinar; click here to learn more about future webinars in the series.

Sunshine Week webinars on March 14 and 16 will discuss how to use government data and bring it to life in stories

For Sunshine Week, coming up March 13-19, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and Uncovered: A Cold Case Platform will present two webinars discussing how technology can help or hinder government transparency. Admission is free, but NFOIC welcomes donations.

At 2 p.m. ET on March 14, data journalist Lam Thuy Vo will present "Igniting Inspiration: Using Freedom of Information to Bring Data to Light and to Life." The Sunshine Week website says: it "will focus on FOI and data possibilities — accomplishments via scraping and reporting using FOI requests." Register here.

At 3 p.m. ET on March 16, David Cuillier, Grace Cheng and Ashlee Fujawa will present "Sparking Discovery: Using FOI and Big Data to Tell Stories, Build Community, and Solve Problems." Cuiller is NFOIC's board president and a University of Arizona associate professor; Cheng is the director of government practice and practical law at Thomson Reuters; and Fujawa is the co-founder and head of community at Uncovered. From the website: "The panel will cover the basics of making open records requests, how to deal with denials, and how to present data in ways that engage and empower the public." Register here.

Pandemic roundup: Interactive database lets you track local cases; dark days ahead for nurses and hospitals

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

The pandemic highlights rural health-care disparities, writes the editorial board of The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more here.

The New York Times has a new interactive database that allows you to track coronavirus cases in any state, county or metro area. Check it out here.

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that all vaccinated participants with severe Covid-19 had at least one other risk factor, including age, poor immune system, heart disease, and more. Read more here.

Hospitals and nursing homes are so short-staffed that some are asking infected nurses to come in to work. Some facilities are also asking nurses to use vacation and sick days to stay home if they test positive for coronavirus. That could put some infected nurses in an impossible position: risk financial ruin if they don't have enough paid time off, or go to work sick and endanger patients and coworkers. Experts warn that darker days are ahead for hospitals.

NBC News has a new interactive map tracking hospital stress. Check it out here.

Journalists are using more data visualizations to educate about the pandemic; here are some free tools you can use

Screenshot of US Covid Atlas home page; to enlarge, click on it; go to it here. 

The coronavirus pandemic spurred an increase in data visualizations as journalists worked to show readers trends in deaths, infections and vaccinations. A recent survey sheds light on what data visualization tools journalists have found helpful, and what challenges they've faced, Saima Sidik reports for the Global Investigative Journalism Network. We've included links to some free tools you might find useful.

Columbia University-based multimedia journalist Javier Sauras and Adrián Blanco of The Washington Post surveyed more than 50 data journalists and news-media visualization experts from around the world, including some from small newsrooms. They discussed their findings at the recent virtual Northeastern University Computation + Journalism Symposium, in which scientists, journalists, health-care providers and philanthropists discussed how the pandemic and data journalism have shaped each other.

Sauras and Blanco found that maps are the most popular data visualization, such as the US Covid Atlas made by the University of Chicago's Center for Spatial Data Science. "Survey respondents reported that — in addition to maps — bar charts and line charts were among their favorite tools for describing the pandemic, and that purple and orange were their go-to colors. Many of the journalists who were interviewed felt that the pandemic had shown their coworkers the importance of being able to put visualizations together — a silver lining for those attending the conference," Sidik reports. "Some survey respondents, particularly those from small newsrooms, said that finding reliable experts who could help them make sense of Covid-19 data had been challenging. Access to experts allowed journalists to break away from formulaic storylines and report novel information, while those without that access found themselves playing catch-up."

Dylan Halpern, principal software architect of the Covid Atlas, told attendees: "This pandemic will not be our last, and so having these sorts of accessible tools is critical." To that end, here's a list of free data visualization tools you might find useful in your coverage of the pandemic and other topics. Unless otherwise noted, the tools are free and you don't have to know how to code to use them.

Canva has free, customizable templates for infographics and charts, including ones tailored to different social media platforms.

Datawrapper provides customizable templates for graphs, charts, and certain kinds of maps.

Flourish has recently opened for free public use, but it also has a newsroom-only version, created in partnership with Google News Lab, with souped-up features.

Genially allows you to create charts, infographics, timelines, presentations and more.

Google Fusion Tables is an online database and mapping tool that helps you produce detailed data maps quickly. 

Google Public Data Explorer lets you create interactive graphics using publicly available data.

Google Spreadsheet Charts are a capability that comes with Google Sheets.

Piktochart allows you to embed customizable interactive content even if you're not tech-savvy. You can start from scratch or use one of the free templates. You can link up Excel or Google Sheets documents to populate maps and charts for easier use.

Tableau Public allows you to quickly and easily make complex data visualizations, though it can be picky about formatting.

Tableizer quickly turns your spreadsheets into an HTML table.

New database shows coronavirus infection clusters in a dozen rural jails in the Mountain West

"The Mountain West, which for months avoided the worst of the pandemic, has rapidly devolved into one of the most alarming hot spots in a country that recorded its eight millionth confirmed case on Thursday, a day when more than 65,000 cases were announced nationwide, the most in a single day since July," Lucy Tompkins, Maura Turcotte and Libby Seline report for The New York Times. "Seventeen states, including many in the Mountain West, have added more cases in the past week than any other week of the pandemic. And the spread through sparsely populated areas of rural America has created problems in small towns that lack critical resources — including doctors — even in ordinary times."

Prisons and jails, often overcrowded and unsanitary, have been a major driver of coronavirus spread in many parts of the country. "Nationally, jails and prisons have seen disproportionate rates of infection and death, with a mortality rate twice as high as in the general population and an infection rate more than four times as high, according to recent data," the Times reports. "A New York Times database has tracked clusters of at least 50 coronavirus cases in a dozen rural jails in Montana, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico during the pandemic. Among them: the Purgatory Correctional Center in Hurricane, Utah, with 166 infections; the jail in Twin Falls, Idaho, with 279; and, in New Mexico, the Cibola County Correctional Center, which has reported 357 cases."

A recent coronavirus surge at the Cascade County Detention Center in Great Falls, Montana, illustrates how quickly infections can spread among incarcerated populations and the community beyond. "More than 300 inmates and staff members have been infected in a facility meant to hold 365 people, the county’s first major outbreak in a region where the virus is suddenly surging," the Times reports. "Infections at the jail make up about a quarter of all known virus cases in the county. Health authorities say that the jail’s outbreak, which began in mid-August, was not believed to be the main cause of the community’s recent surge, but that it had led to some cases." The jail's medical director told the Times that the jail had released 29 people who were considered actively infected within the past two months.

CDC's coronavirus tracker now includes county-level data along the rural-urban spectrum

Screenshot from the CDC's Coronavirus infection tracker;
click the image to enlarge it or click here to see the interactive website.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's coronavirus infection tracker now parses pandemic data trends by a county's population size, along with other factors. So journalists or researchers can examine and compare, for example, overall rural infection trends, rural infections in Alabama, or even the impact of the pandemic on human mobility in a certain county over a desired time period.

Counties are divided into six categories along the National Center for Health Statistics' urban-rural classification scheme. That includes four metropolitan county types, one micropolitan county type, and one non-core county type for the most rural areas. Read more here.

Officials fear cyberattacks to voting systems before election

Federal officials fear that, just before or after the election, hackers will try to get into voting systems and "sow chaos and uncertainty" with tactics such as freezing voter registration data, election poll books, or the computer systems of the secretaries of state who certify election results, Nicole Perlroth and David Sanger report for The New York Times.

Attacks have been ramping up, including a recent attack on Tyler Technologies, a Texas company that sells software that states and cities use to display results on election night. It's "the latest of nearly a thousand such attacks over the past year against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems," Perloth and Sanger report. "Many of the attacks are conducted by Russian criminal groups, some with shady ties to President Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services. 

Federal investigators aren't sure whether the attack on Tyler was a run-of-the-mill ransomware attack, in which hackers lock data until they're paid a ransom in cryptocurrency. But some of Tyler's clients noticed outsiders trying to log into their systems after the attack, Perloth and Sanger report. 

"With only 37 days before the election, federal investigators still do not have a clear picture of whether the ransomware attacks clobbering American networks are purely criminal acts, seeking a quick payday, or Trojan horses for more nefarious Russian interference," Perloth and Sanger report. "But they have not had much success in stopping them. In just the first two weeks of September, another seven American government entities have been hit with ransomware and their data stolen."

One cybersecurity expert said it's likely that local governments will be hit by hackers around the election, Perloth and Sanger report.

"The proliferation of ransomware attacks that result in data theft is an evolution in Russian tactics, beyond the kind of 'hack and leak' events engineered against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016," Perloth and Sanger report. "By design, whether the attacks are criminal or state sponsored is not clear, and the attacker does not always have to be successful everywhere. Just a few well-placed ransomware attacks, in key battleground states, could create the impression that voters everywhere would not be able to cast their ballots or that the ballots could not be accurately counted — what the cybersecurity world calls a 'perception hack.'"

Temporary battle against covid-19 gave Cherokees in N.C. impetus and tools to battle longstanding opioid epidemic

The "intricate and bold" steps taken to help tamp down the coronavirus pandemic among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians may have helped them learn how to fight an older enemy: the opioid epidemic, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle reports for 100 Days in Appalachia, in a story published by the Clay County Progress in North Carolina.

Qualla Boundary is shown in red, adjoining
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The infection rates in the EBCI reservation, known as the Qualla Boundary, have been "exemplary" compared to those in surrounding counties, Clapsaddle writes, partly because tribal authorities had enacted policies stricter than those required by the state or federal governments, and had pooled resources to better distribute them.

"In partnership with the nonprofit Dogwood Health Trust, a nonprofit health organization based in Asheville, we began providing access to free community-wide testing (even asymptomatic) long before North Carolina recommended it," Clapsaddle reports. "We set up roadblocks and allowed only residents or EBCI enrolled members to access the Boundary. We closed non-essential businesses, including Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and our government offices. We employed a sophisticated and comprehensive contact tracing system that has been credited with identifying asymptomatic carriers before they unknowingly transmitted the virus."

But even as they fought the pandemic, the tribe saw an "explosion" of drug-overdose deaths, and even more overdoses that didn't result in death. Tribal aid ensured that the community was cared for, "but it also meant that we became one of the few communities in far western North Carolina who still had the means to be paying customers — especially in the illegal drug trade," Clapsaddle reports.

Because of the pandemic blockades, drug runners tried to make the same money with fewer trips, Clapsaddle reports. So they brought in a concentrated form of fentanyl-laced heroin that street dealers could later cut before selling to customers. But fentanyl is deadly in tiny doses, and the new product was stronger even after the dealers cut it. That resulted in seven deaths.

That highlighted for tribal leaders the lack of consistent data on overdoses and drug use, Clapsaddle reports. Emergency care providers and health-care facilities often don't code a death as an overdose, fearing it might bring stigma. Instead, they sometimes code such deaths as heart attacks.

"The EBCI’s Overdose Map, where the collected data is housed for analysis, also does not account for instances when Narcan, an overdose-reversing medication, was used," Clapsaddle reports. EBCI Secretary of Health and Human Services Vickie Bradley said she's trying to improve data collection.

The biggest takeaway from the pandemic, Clapsaddle writes, is that "To date, state and federal aid has done little to assist impoverished Native communities coping with historical grief and trauma in their fight against substance abuse. But if we are to learn anything from covid-19, it is that waiting for outside help is a death sentence."

Eviction wave could be coming; see how your county ranks

Screenshot from the Eviction Lab webiste, showing eviction rates contrasted with population. The website is also searchable by other factors. Click the image to enlarge it; click here to view the interactive version.

"Americans owe more than $21.5 billion in overdue rent, according to one recent analysis that underlined the urgency of the housing crisis facing American renters as the coronavirus pandemic drags on," Emma Coleman reports for Route Fifty. "With eviction moratoriums ending in many cities and states, experts are warning of an impending wave of families being forced out of their homes with devastating collateral consequences if immediate action is not taken to keep people housed."

Areas with high proportions of low-income families, immigrants, and people of color are most likely to be hard-hit by evictions, Coleman reports.

Princeton University's Eviction Lab website has an interactive map showing state- and county-level eviction data; click here to see how your county ranks.

Pandemic complicates response to huge California wildfire; check your county's wildfire risk with interactive map

Wildfire risk map from Wildfirerisk.org. Click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

California is facing its largest wildfire since the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, aided by an exceptionally dry winter, but the coronavirus pandemic has sidelined more than 1,000 incarcerated firefighters. "The setbacks highlight the challenges that California and other Western states are facing heading into the most dangerous part of fire season amid the worst pandemic in more than 100 years," Kevin Stark reports for NPR. "Even a potential exposure to the virus could sideline hundreds of firefighters for weeks."

Two smaller lightning-sparked fires in Modoc and Siskiyou counties, near the Oregon border, have merged to form the Caldwell Fire, now approaching 80,000 acres and about 45 percent contained. In comparison, the Camp Fire was 153,336 acres, The Bay Area News Group reports.

The fire has been more difficult to contain because nearly 1,000 incarcerated firefighters have been quarantined by the coronavirus pandemic. "In late June, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials put 12 prison fire camps on lockdown after they were potentially exposed to the coronavirus through outbreaks within the prison system, sidelining as many as 750 inmate firefighters," Stark reports. A few weeks later, the quarantine was extended after another potential exposure.

According to state fire agency Cal Fire, about 3,500 of the state's 15,500 wildfire fighters were inmates in recent years. "But this year, many inmate firefighters were sent home from prison after the state granted early release to thousands of prisoners to depopulate crowded facilities and slow the spread of the coronavirus," Stark reports. "As a result, less than half of California's inmate firefighting crews were active for duty much of July." Gov. Gavin Newsom, has promised to hire more than 800 seasonal firefighters.

The Caldwell Fire will not likely be the last significant wildfire this season, since much of the Western U.S. had an exceptionally dry winter. And responding to those wildfires could be complicated even without the issue of prison labor, since volunteer firefighters face the same quarantine issues.

Wildfires aren't just a California phenomenon. See your county and state's risk level at WildfireRisk.org, a searchable, interactive database maintained by the U.S. Forest Service.

New covid tracker highlights rural inequalities; meanwhile, new federal database is rife with errors, analysts say

A screengrab from the CURE database. Washington State University map; click the image to enlarge it.

Scientists from Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine have launched an online tracker that provides daily updates on covid-19 cases and deaths in rural communities.

The Covid Urban Rural Explorer also highlights rural-urban contrasts in the pandemic, providing a daily report on areas with spiking cases. It also identifies rural counties with both limited hospital capacity and rapidly increasing infections. Moreover, it provides daily case and death statistics based on a moving seven-day average.

CURE uses publicly available data. The data on cases and deaths comes from The New York Times (which receives its data from state and local health agencies and hospitals). Hospital bed data comes from The Accountability Project, which receives the data for that database from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The CURE database does not rely on the new federal coronavirus reporting system. In that system, instituted earlier this month, hospitals bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and file information with a private contractor for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Trump administration promised that the new system would be an improvement, but data analysts say it is "updated erratically and is rife with inconsistencies and errors," Pien Huang and Selena Simmons-Duffin report for NPR.

Map shows which states are allowing in-person prison visits; database shows state-level impact of covid-19 in prisons

Map by The Marshall Project; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Though prisons are a major vector for the novel coronavirus, some states are gradually easing restrictions on in-person visits from family and lawyers, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism outlet focused on criminal justice. The story includes an interactive map and detailed updates for where each state's corrections systems stand.

The Marshall Project, in partnership with The Associated Press, also maintains a frequently updated database showing how many people have been sickened and/or died from covid-19 in prisons, both nationwide and within each state.

It should be noted that most of this data concerns state and federal prisons only, and not local jails. However, six states have unified prison and jail systems (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont) so in those cases, the data includes testing and case numbers from both pre-trial detainees and sentenced prisoners.

Coronavirus data returns to CDC site, for a limited time, after outcry; HHS system will have more data, but . . .

"On the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead," Lena Sun and Amy Goldstein report for The Washington Post. "A day later, an outcry — including from other federal health officials — prompted the Trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily CDC report on the pandemic."

The announcement appears to be a win for public transparency, "but with any policy regarding an American hospital, the fine print is essential: The CDC site will only provide the data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units up to July 14," Matt Stieb reports for New York magazine's Intelligencer. "Moving forward, the American public will have to access coronavirus hospitalization data from private sources."

The administration insists the move is about efficiency, and that the data will remain available to the public. Instead of reporting data to the CDC and the Department for Health and Human Services, hospitals will share information only with HHS through a portal created and maintained by a private contractor. The contractor, TeleTracking Technologies, was awarded a $10 million no-bid contract in April, Jon Allsop reports for Columbia Journalism Review.

For some, the change could have merit. For example, they say the CDC system "was built for tracking hospital-acquired pneumonias and urinary-tract infections, and it wasn’t perfect for keeping up with coronavirus data," Nicholas Florko and Eric Boodman report for Stat. "The HHS system, however, was built specifically to track the covid-19 pandemic and it will compile far more data than just what’s currently being produced by hospitals. Plus, hospitals were already reporting similar data through the TeleTracking system. The federal government has been using those reports to determine each state’s allocation of Gilead’s covid-19 drug, remdesivir."

Many have concerns about the switch, though. "Hospitals are being asked to learn a new data system as they’re struggling to keep up with a raging pandemic," Florko and Boodman report. "Streams of data that the CDC was making available to researchers and the public have suddenly been cut off, exacerbating fears that the Trump administration is trying to stomp out any evidence that the pandemic is worse than ever."

However, the move is consistent "with the administration’s habit of paying private contractors to do research or execute tasks that taxpayers are already paying for: A report from ProPublica published on Wednesday details how federal and state governments paid McKinsey over $100 million this year for pandemic advice, while the White House cast aside the recommendations of its own public-health experts," Stieb reports for the Intelligencer.

Some states putting names of banned law enforcement officers online

"In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody, Oregon has released the names of over 1,700 officers whose transgressions over the past 50 years were so serious that they were banned from working in law enforcement in the state," Andrew Selsky reports for The Associated Press.

"In the absence of an official nationwide database, a non-profit maintains a website intended to be a national registry of certificate or license revocations," Selsky reports. "The National Decertification Index provides access to records from agencies in 44 states and was created by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training."

The database isn't comprehensive; California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, don't certify or decertify officers. Georgia does decertify officers but doesn't contribute to the registry. Contributions to the database are voluntary.

White House creates online toolbox to connect rural leaders to federal funding, data and info to help fight drug addiction

White House officials announced Wednesday the launch of the Rural Community Toolbox, an online clearinghouse meant to connect rural leaders with federal funding, data and resources to help fight drug addiction in their communities.

The toolbox includes resources from 16 different federal departments and agencies on more than 40 addiction-related topics, touting itself as a "one-stop shop" for those seeking aid.

The Rural Community Toolbox includes an updated Community Assessment Tool, an interactive resources with county-level data on drug overdose deaths and correlated socioeconomic factors such as education attainment and unemployment. The update includes more data layers, including broadband availability, available drug treatment facilities, concentration of health-care professionals, poverty, and economic development districts. The update also has a rural prosperity index.

States and counties with the highest share of speeding-related fatalities are ranked; local data are available

A new report shows which states and counties have the most speeding-related fatalities as a share of overall vehicle fatalities. Several largely rural states, including Alaska and Vermont, made the top 15 list, with New Hampshire in the top spot. All 50 states and 593 counties were ranked. Most of the top 30 counties were metropolitan, but many rural counties were on the list of those with the highest proportions of speed-related fatalities.

To create the report for the Governor's Highway Safety Administration, researchers at car-shopping app CoPilot analyzed state and county data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Census Bureau, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2014-18.

Speeding-related fatalities were associated with a number of factors, including alcohol consumption, age, seat-belt usage, driving conditions, and road maintenance. A 2019 GHSA report found that curvy roads, more common in rural areas, are frequently a factor in speeding-related crashes, and that a higher percentage of fatal curve-related crashes happen on rural roads.