• Investigative Reporters and Editors has announced the winners of the Philip Meyer Awards for investigative journalism: Payments, Pain Pills, and Pardons. 
• As public health officials brace for a brutal flu season, a Minnesota state legislator is championing a paid sick days bill.
• At times during his long career, one private contractor was performing up to 80% of the autopsies in Mississippi–the trouble is, he may have been completely unqualified, if not an outright fraud.
• For the last 655 years, a group of farmers has been forced to pay the equivalent of $76 a year to the Catholic Church to atone for an ancient crime, but a Swiss court has ruled they don’t have to keep paying.  

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]