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    Joseph Erbentraut

    Joseph Erbentraut

    Senior Reporter, HuffPost

  • Mike Pence Ignored A Lead Contamination Crisis In His Backyard

    Indiana didn't take serious action on East Chicago's lead problem till the vice president left the governorship.

  • The EPA Knows How To Prevent The Next Flint. Will A Trump EPA Do It?

    It's unclear where the next administration will lead the agency tasked with keeping America's water safe.

  • The 'Next Flint' Could Already Be Happening For 4 Million Americans

    A new analysis shows that utilities in small, rural communities are often skipping crucial tests of their water supplies.

  • Michigan Is Still Fighting A Court Order To Provide Water To Flint

    “We’ve got an ongoing crisis to this day,” the Natural Resources Defense Council says.

  • U.S. Cities Aren't Ready To Fend Off The Next Flint

    Many American cities are struggling to keep up aging water systems.

  • Pittsburgh Homeowners Have To Pay Up If They Don't Want Lead-Poisoned Water

    As lead levels in city water creep up, public utilities are only willing to do so much.

  • Why This Father Feeds His Son Freakish Fruit And Vegetables

    “Nature doesn’t grow everything perfectly," he says.

  • Photographer On A Quest To Capture Native Americans' Diversity

    Matika Wilbur hopes her photos will help foster more accurate representations of American Indians in curricula and the media.

  • Virtual Reality Job Interview Training Helps Veterans With PTSD Find Work

    Job interviews are already stressful enough -- there's a reason there are more than 10 million Google search results for the terms "job interview" and "stress." But for veterans who are also dealing with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions, the experience can be triggering in a way that leaves far too many of them jobless. In an effort to address this, a new job-interview training program developed by a software company is aiming to help veteran job seekers dealing with PTSD improve their interview skills and, hopefully, get hired. The program, called Job Interview Training with Molly Porter, was created by SIMmersion and inspired by an algorithm the company developed in order to deliver interview training to FBI agents. According to Vice's Motherboard, a user launches an interview with Molly Porter, the human resources professional who kicks off the session by asking common interview questions, including those that a veteran might have particular trouble responding to, such as questions concerning employment gaps.

  • Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Bill Could Cut Crime, Reduce Recidivism And Save Money

    A new bill proposing to reduce the United States’ prison population while also cutting crime and saving money was introduced Thursday in the House by Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.). The legislation, titled the Safe, Accountable, Fair, Effective (SAFE) Justice Act, is the outcome of the congressmen's work leading the House Judiciary Committee’s Over-criminalization Task Force, which heard testimony from criminal justice experts over the past year and a half, according to a joint news release issued by Scott and Sensenbrenner’s offices.

  • One Way To Feel Less Guilty About Your 'Orange Is The New Black' Binge

    The third season of "Orange Is The New Black" came out this month, and many of us have already made our way through the 13 new episodes (not to mention fallen in love with Ruby Rose). Some have argued that the dramedy offers an unrealistic portrayal of the experience of being imprisoned and actually exploits that experience through its sensationalized storylines. Black and Pink, a Boston-based LGBT prison-abolition organization, is one of them.

  • Couples Are Getting Paid To Have Sex To Try And Curb Spread Of HIV

    The Guardian reported earlier this month on some of the lucky couples that are being paid by research-and-design teams to take new condom prototypes out for a test drive. "It slips in and out," one tester told the Guardian of an unfortunate romp using a female condom. The testing is connected to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s challenge, announced about a year and a half ago, for scientists and designers to come together to create a "next generation condom." The hope is that more people would want to wear a new, better condom, which could lead to a reduction in the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

  • Kids With Incarcerated Parents Find Support, Encouragement With This Program

    The United States' incarcerated population -- the largest in the world -- is at the heart of several national debates: People argue about the economic burden it places on the federal budget, how inmates are treated and the long-term effects of the prison system. More than 2.7 million U.S. children currently have at least one parent behind bars, according to Rutgers University's National Resource Center on Children & Families of the Incarcerated. Approximately 10 million children have had a parent in prison at some point in their lives.

  • San Francisco Is Using Sex To Sell Water Conservation

    It’s been said that sex sells when it comes to everything from cars to clothes, but can it actually change consumer behavior when it comes to something as, well, unsexy as water conservation? The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission seems to think so. The commission announced earlier month that it will extend an unusual water conservation campaign, which it says was responsible for helping the city’s residents surpass usage-reduction goals in the drought-plagued state, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

  • Muslim Girls Design Their Own Culturally Appropriate Basketball Uniforms

    The Cedar Riverside girls’ community basketball team in Minneapolis had a big problem. Being of the Muslim faith, the middle-school students dress in hijabs, which tend to get in the way of the action on the basketball court. "I wouldn't be able to do moves or anything because of my skirt, and every time I run my wrap will keep falling,” the team’s point guard, Sihal Ali, explained to KARE, the Minneapolis NBC affiliate, this week.

  • How One California City Pays Its Most Violent Offenders To Stay Out Of Trouble

    As Baltimore, already in the national spotlight over the police killing of Freddie Gray, endured its deadliest month in almost 40 years, the search for solutions to the problem of persistent, violent crime turned again to a California city that was once among America's most dangerous. The initiative, part of the city's Office of Neighborhood Safety, identifies young male residents, aged 13 to 25, who are most at risk of killing or being killed. Participants are also connected with community mentors, who are credible in part because many have their own violent pasts.

  • How One Massachusetts Jail Cut Its Population By 30 Percent In 6 Years

    Some facilities have already begun this work, such as the Hampden County jail in Ludlow, Massachusetts. According to a report released last week by the Vera Institute, a prison reform nonprofit, the Hampden facility cut its inmate population by 30 percent (634 inmates) between 2008 and 2014. The Vera report notes that while Hampden's declining inmate population was connected to a reduced crime rate in Springfield, the county’s largest city, there were other factors involved as well -- namely the jail’s increased diversions to probation supervision and its expanded investment in re-entry initiatives, which have caused local recidivism to drop by 25 percent since 2000.

  • School May Be The Best Place To Address PTSD In Young People, But Resources Are Spread Thin

    For far too many students attending urban schools in the U.S., learning takes a back seat to what’s going on outside the classroom -- namely, violence at home and in the community -- and few schools are equipped to help students cope. A federal class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges that California's Compton Unified School District has failed to properly address its students' experiences of trauma. School districts, the lawsuit argues, are obligated under federal disability law to offer support for students who have experienced trauma.

  • Positive Messaging Works Better For Public Health

    For most people, hearing about the benefits of eating healthy food is a more effective push to change their behavior than hearing why they shouldn’t be eating junk, a new study claims. This is according to an analysis from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab of 43 published studies examining nutrition messages of public health campaigns. The review found that negative messages — like “Eat healthy foods or lose years off your life!” — are effective for some audiences, particularly experts like physicians or nutritionists who are already knowledgeable in the field.

  • Locking Up Juvenile Offenders Doesn't Work, Pew Study Suggests

    Reduced sentences and community-based treatments are more effective for most juvenile offenders than locking them in correctional facilities, according to new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The report, released last month, says research shows that lengthy stays for juvenile offenders in out-of-home settings, like a correctional center or residential facility, are expensive for governments and fail to reduce young offenders’ risk of recidivism, making for a poor return on investment. Alternatives to correctional facility placement showed better outcomes for young offenders in numerous studies cited by the Pew report.